


Death Takes A Holiday: By Neon Lights and Desert Sand

by LyraNgalia, rude_not_ginger



Series: Death Takes A Holiday [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action/Adventure, Attempted Carjacking, Blood, Car Bombs, Deception, Deduction, Desert, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Emotional Intimacy, Emotional Roller Coaster, Exhaustion, Explosions, F/M, Fast Cars, Games of Deduction, Games of Seduction, Gen, Great Hiatus, Heist, Intimacy, John Watson's Wedding, Kidnapping, Las Vegas, Mind Palace, Minor Injuries, Morning After, Morse Code, Mysterious Photographs, Post Reichenbach, Recreational Drug Use, Resolved Sexual Tension, Serious Injuries, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:43:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 49,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having agreed to a tentative partnership to take down the late Jim Moriarty's criminal network, Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes find themselves headed to Las Vegas, and the next strand in the spider's web. But perhaps they aren't the only ones hunting...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tarmac and Asphalt

**Author's Note:**

> Please see [Death Takes A Holiday: In the Shadow of the Black Mountain](http://archiveofourown.org/works/694742/chapters/1277705) for notes/explanations on the peculiarities of this fic's writing style.

Three of the female flight attendants between Baltimore and Las Vegas. There would have been a fourth, except the third had thrashed about a bit too vigorously and left a sizable dent in the bulkhead of the crew rest compartment. Not to mention the number of pockets picked during the flight before _that_. Irene was fairly certain she'd counted forty-three, but then she had also slept some during the trip.  
  
So when the plane lands in Las Vegas, touching down in the dry desert city with a roar of engine noise, it feels as if the entire flight heaves a sigh of relief. There was, after all, only so much one woman, even if she was _The Woman_ , could do to keep an entire plane's worth of irritable passengers from killing her travel companion without resorting to ~~too many~~ drugs. Which might explain, partially, why they were moving through the Las Vegas airport at such a rapid clip.  
  
Though, Irene would privately admit, it was no big loss to avoid as much as possible the gauche, neon brightness of the airport casino, with its threadbare beige carpeting and the tired, empty borderline-alcoholism of its departing guests. Still, she keeps an eye out, scrutinizing their fellow passengers as they move through the gaudy airport and towards the baggage claim.  
  
  
Sherlock moves fast, but it has nothing to do with the idiots in the plane. Or, well, it does, but not for the reasons she expects. He still can't believe she was able to keep the plane passengers so calm on their first flight. They were all so _unruly._ It began with that first child screaming madly. Sherlock had turned around and told the child to shut up. The Woman, not saying a word, threatened to rifle through the bag of an elderly matron behind them to acquire the ball gag she had.  
  
He had scowled. _Do you have any idea where that has been?_  
  
She had smirked. _The last six places. Why do you think it's a credible threat?_  
  
It had been an enjoyable flight, to say the least. But now was his favorite part of every flight.  
  
  
They pass by endless banks of slot machines, all of the occupants banking on one last chance to make it rich before they left Las Vegas, a Starbucks, its patrons lining up out the door for a pick-me-up before they braved the city and its neon glitz, down the escalator, and to the luggage terminal. She doesn't move as fast as Sherlock, but then, she doesn't have to, when he is utterly recognizable from a distance, at least to someone who knew where to look.  
  
Irene, on the other hand, is keeping her eye out on a woman, a few years younger, too quickly come into too much money, judging by the way she fidgeted with her clothing, and as she steps up to the luggage carousel, she casts an eye about the carousel, watching.  
  
"Something tells me you weren't just trying to escape the man you spent the whole flight kicking."  
  
  
"My legs are long," he says, which is an utter lie, but he doesn't care.  
  
They have no checked bags, but Sherlock stands in front of the carousel expectantly. It's the most enjoyable part of any trip, and something he and Mycroft used to do when they were children. He stands just a distance away, before the cameras. They won't notice him this far off, no matter how recognizable he might be in London.  
  
The first bag falls down. Black, oversized. He points at it.  
  
"Athletic, coach class. Earring in the right ear." Another, this one red. "Matron with the ball gag."  
  
  
"Obvious, from the size alone," she dismisses. "Still obvious, matches her carry-on."  
  
Irene knows exactly what she's looking for, and she's positioned herself in the exact right place to get it. Not the matched Samsonite set. Or the care-worn battered suitcase marked with a violet ribbon. She spares a moment of attention for him, sharp eyes and even sharper words. "You'll have to do better than that to impress a girl."  
  
  
This sort of game would always impress John, but the Woman was more difficult, she wanted to be impressed. She wanted him to more than just _play_ , but actually _prove_ himself. He could do that.  
  
He pointed to the next. "Man, 87, recently returned from Nassau, Bahamas on a cruise. Suitcase is ten years old at least, probably purchased by his wife. Contents include one queen conch shell and at least one stuffed animal."  
  
  
The last bit of observation makes her take a second look at the case. The first had been obvious, from the tags on the suitcase and she expects a look around to see who was sunburned enough to match the destination. The last though, she can't tell as easily, and that earns him a smile, half approval, half intrigue. "For the grandchildren, I expect. Not one to keep track of _things_ , not at his age. He'd rather have memories."  
  
Another bag tumbles off the carousel, its leather still stiff, without the patina of wear. Louis Vuitton. Latest season. Irene steps forward and picks it up without hesitation. The sweep of the carousel is enough to keep its rightful owner from seeing what had happened to her bag.  
  
  
Sherlock intended to continue on with this game, but suddenly he sees the Woman move forward to pick up a bag. He puts the pieces together quickly. Latest season, expensive bag. Belongs to the woman playing with her collar. Large amount of money in the bag. The Woman noticed first, of course. Where Sherlock wouldn't have even thought to grab the bag, he was so focused.  
  
He waits just long enough, and then follows her, as though only just noticing she'd already grabbed her bag. He's far more on the other woman's mind than the Woman is.  
  
"Something for the new wardrobe, I assume," he says once he catches her up.  
  
  
The fact that he has to catch up only makes her more pleased. "Among other things," comes the cryptic answer. She gestures back at the carousel. "Not going to tell me which bag belongs to the undiagnosed diabetic?"  
  
  
"Not if you're planning on making a solid getaway," he replies. "She's a former security guard, very nervous. Standard standing with hand on hip, not for a gun, it isn't positioned correctly. Positioning for a walkie-talkie, then. Agitated, so new to her money. Low-income job, then. Security. She'll be on the lookout for theft."  
  
He nods.  
  
"Let's go."  
  
  
" _That's_ more like it." The approval in her voice is obvious this time, as if goading him into the deduction, into showing off, was nothing more than her due. Despite that, though, she does increase speed, still moving with self-assurance, but with an eye to putting as much distance between them and the newly-wealthy former security guard as possible without attracting attention.  
  
The automatic sliding doors leading to the outside open and shut on the steady stream of arrivals, and the taut, dry air of the desert blows in with each passenger that leaves the airport. She's already thinking of what modes of dress, what disguise, will be most effective in a place like this.  
  
There is too, in the planning, a desire to find another disguise, another alias, that would fool him as completely as the desperate Italian youth.  
  
"I expect you already have a place in mind, unless your plan had been to stop somewhere to find an empty-headed young thing to play the part."  
  
  
"A quick stop off for a few hours in order to get what we need, and then we'll head to the casino," he says. "Now you've got the funds for shopping for an appropriate set of outfits."  
  
He, of course, hadn't properly planned for a set of outfits for a woman. He'd only really planned on coming by himself, and his plan was better then, but it will certainly be _more interesting_ now.  
  
"And I probably need a haircut. And a new mobile."  
  
  
She steps out the automatic doors, and the hints of arid desert air becomes a furnace blast. She expects she can feel the skin on her face tightening as the air draws out moisture. Irene raises an imperious hand, gesturing for a cab, and throws him a speculative look over her shoulder, a smirk tugging at her lips.

  
"Who said I was sharing?"  
  
  
"You owe me at least three hundred quid's worth of that," he says. "We did have a bet on the plane, after all."  
  
  
Three cabs, already full, drive past. A fourth slows to a stop in front of her and Irene reaches for the door. "That you wouldn't be arrested once we landed? Care to extend that?"  
  
  
"No, the flight attendants," he replies, smirking at her. "And I won't. I've been dead for some time now, Woman."  
  
He reaches around her to open the door for her and holds it. Gentlemanly behavior doesn't come naturally to him, but he does know it.  
  
  
Her lips thin with momentary irritation. Stung pride, but only a glancing blow. It's part of the game, but a peripheral part, one where losing is simply another move.

  
"I have standards, and the last one was irritable," she retorts, brushing past him with a smirk as she slides into the taxi.  
  
  
"Yes, she was," Sherlock replies, following. The look on his face is of smug pride. After all, while she was busy, he had plenty of time to manipulate the flight attendant in his own way.  
  
"Mandalay Bay," he says to the driver. He passes a glance over the man's photograph on his ticket, over the pictures of the children attached to the vent. Three children, all with little clefts in the chin of their heart-shaped faces. The man's knuckles, peeling in the Nevada sunshine, shone over the steering wheel.  
  
"Though if I remember correctly, my part in any of the games wasn't specified when the bet was made."  
  
  
"Mandalay Bay?" she echoes, raising a hand to forestall the driver. "No, Caesars, please."  
  
She settles against the cheap cracked pleather of the cab's back seat and gives him a Look. "Perhaps, but that was hardly sporting."  
  
Not that she minded.  
  
  
Sherlock waves at the driver, as if he were simply going with whatever his wife or partner or girlfriend was wanting. The driver turns onto the road and ignores them. How many drivers would simply ignore? Sherlock imagines they would have such interesting jobs to _observe_ with.  
  
"Neither of us play fair, you know," he replies.  
  
The Woman shifts on the seat and the slightly discolored stuffing appears below her leg. The discoloration is wrong, though, and Sherlock finds himself staring at it.  
  
  
" _I_ don't," she agrees, sparing a glance for the driver as the cab pulls away from the curb. "But a gentleman would. And you were doing so well as one."  
  
Her attention returns to him, sees where his gaze is caught, and she arches an eyebrow expectantly. "Yes?" she asks, in the same tone as she would have said, _impress me.  
  
  
_ Sherlock's eyes glance around the cab. Scratches on the door handle, common, but the scratches are long, deep. The locks have been removed, so the door _has_ to be opened from the outside. He looks up to the front of the cab. Area of key has a sock over it, something long poking out. Could be a key. Could also be something else, something used to undo the lock.  
  
He glances at the taxi driver's face in the window. Sunglasses. Dark hair. Easily could be the man in the photograph, except---except---  
  
All of his children have clefts in their chins. The man in the drivers' seat does not.  
  
"Genetics," he says.  
  
  
She's grown used to his cryptic remarks, and her eyes snap to the dashboard of the car. _Genetics._ The children in the photographs. The driver's face in the--  
  
Oh.  
  
Her lips thin, and her muscles tense, as she glances back at him. She knows he's seen more than she has, that his observations are, in this case, going to be more useful. She shifts again, and her words are carefully careless, "Do you ever get tired of being cryptic?"  
  
  
"Never," he says, leaning over her, as if to kiss her. He leans against her and presses his mouth against her ear.  
  
"Knife is against my right leg," he says. "Door locks broken. Wait until we get to a stop."  
  
  
She resists the urge to ask now he managed _that_ through airport security; with time, she could have figured it out, but she won't give him the satisfaction of rousing her curiosity.  
  
Her eyes flicker over to the door, taking in the deep gouges at the door handle, the buttons for power windows, hastily disabled by physically breaking them, not disabling the wiring beneath. Fortunate.  
  
She rests her head against his cheek momentarily, the pinned up mass of her hair (only slightly worse for wear on the flights) brushing against his skin. "Hairpins, window," she murmurs back, resting her hand on his right knee.  
  
She liked having a contingency plan.  
  
  
Sherlock gives her a smile. They do work together so very well. He glances back, to where the man is watching them in his rearview window and pulling to a stop at the light. His turn signal is on. Ceasar's isn't in that direction. Taking them somewhere else. Sherlock's certain of that. As the car stops, Sherlock moves, all but leaping forward to grab at the man, getting him in a headlock and holding him tight. The man struggles, but Sherlock holds tight, surprise on his side.  
  
"The door!"  
  
As he holds onto the driver, he looks down, at the passenger seat. On the seat are two high-gloss black-and-white photographs of Sherlock and the Woman in Kotor. His eyes go wide. Not just a random serial killer in a bad neighborhood. This was a hit, and something specifically chosen in order to capture the two of them. Sherlock reaches forward and snatches the photos, stuffing them in his pocket. The action loosens his grip, though, and the driver starts to fight back.  
  
  
She moves at the same moment he does, grabbing the knife as he leaps for the driver, heedless of whether or not she rips the fabric as she does so. Her attention is focused on the door, slipping the knife into the space between the lock and the car's outer shell.  
  
When the man begins to fight back, she resists the urge to lend a hand, instead wrenching the knife around until she hears a solid click. A jiggle at the handle, stuck, and she snatches a hairpin off her head, jamming the thin metal pin into the spaces between the disabled window button. The window grinds down, low enough that she can reach out for the exterior door handle.  
  
"Got it!"  
  
  
"Get the bag, Woman, and run!"  
  
He struggles, trying to get the upper hand on the man, to figure out who sent him, but he sees the man going for a gun, and Sherlock did not bring a weapon that can outmatch that. He just has to avoid. To avoid and to run.  
  
He suddenly releases the man and falls back on the chair, bringing his long legs up to kick at the back of the drivers' seat, hopefully enough to disorientate the man before he dashes out of the door.  
  
  
She bites back a response to his command. There's time enough, once they're clear, to be snappish, but for the moment she merely wrenches the door open and grabs the bag, all but tumbling out of the cab. She trusts that he'll follow and doesn't bother waiting, getting her feet beneath her and running. They were going opposite the Strip, but hadn't gotten far enough that the streets were desolate. Three cars were lined up at the light behind them, and Irene dashes for the second one behind the cab.  
  
She brandishes the knife at the suddenly surprised occupant, a man with lined eyes and the complexion of a recovering recent alcoholic. "Get _out_ and leave the keys," she snaps.  
  
She hopes their would-be kidnapper didn't have a gun.  
  
  
The Woman has thought far faster than Sherlock has (a feat very few have accomplished), and he sees the driver behind the cab is getting out with her pointing a knife in his direction. Sherlock doesn't hesitate to follow, heading immediately for the drivers' side. The Woman can drive, he's certain of this, but he imagines he's got some more experience than she in that arena.  
  
He can hear the cab driver/hitman start to fumble with the door to the cab. Not much time left to get in and get away.  
  
  
This time she _does_ shoot him an irritated look when he reaches for the driver's seat. But there isn't time to argue, and instead Irene all but hauls the unfortunate man away from the door before diving into the back seat with the bag.  
  
"The Strip," she says, adrenaline singing in her veins. "We'll be hard to find with the rest of the tourists."  
  
  
The cab driver gets out of the car, gun out, just as Sherlock pushes down on the gas. Had it been John Watson in the back seat, he might've hesitated. But the Woman would rather live, Sherlock imagines. He pushes down on the gas and swerves towards the cab, only just missing the hitman and clipping the edge of the taxi's door. No time to spin around, he just goes forward.  
  
He looked at the map of this area during his initial planning. Right turn, then left. Quick cut across an alley.  
  
"We'll leave the car on Winchester," he says. "Strip first, then I think to Ceasar's. It's the last place they think we'll go."  
  
They. He mentally chastises himself. They implies that this was more than just one man trying to make a couple of dollars on a few tourists. The Woman wouldn't have missed that.  
  
  
Irene curses, though it's unclear whether it's at the sight of the cab driver's gun or at the car's sudden acceleration. As he veers through the streets, she unzips the bag, rifling through the contents. Clothes, well made, designer, but utterly unsuited to the woman who'd owned the bag. Bought because that was what she thought she should have, now that she had money.  
  
Money that she still kept in cash, in neat envelopes in her suitcase. Money that Irene pulls out and tucks away, so that they don't have to rely on the bag. She's reaching for one of the dresses to use as a hasty, temporary disguise when he speaks, and she turns sharply towards Sherlock.  
  
" _They?_ "  
  
  
Sherlock exhales, but says nothing. He doesn't elaborate, but he doesn't insult her intelligence by attempting to correct himself.  
  
He turns sharply onto the next road. Winchester. Good. Parking wouldn't be a difficulty, considering Sherlock didn't care if the car was towed later.  
  
"Give me one of those," he says, nodding to the envelopes. He gestures to a small shop as he pulls up in front of it. Cheap baseball caps, something to hide his very noticeable hair until he can sort something out.  
  
  
Instead of answering, she finishes shedding the shirt she'd been wearing before and pulls the plum coloured dress she'd liberated from the bag over her head. A touch too tight, but it'll work for the moment. She frowns, shooting him an irritated look at the pointed refusal to elaborate.  
  
"It'd be harder for them to track us separately," she muses, shedding the pants as well. The stolen jewelry she puts into a purse, also new, she finds in the bag, along with one of the envelopes. Even as she speaks, she realizes that's the _last_ thing she wants at the moment, and there is the briefest hesitation as she reaches for the second envelope.  
  
  
"Yes," he agrees. It _will_ be easier for them to track the two of them separately. At the same time, he won't be able to find her if something happens. And she's already dead, so there's no way to _know_ if something happens. That should be irrelevant. It should be. It isn't. He can't---it wouldn't---  
  
"But it's not a good idea for the moment," he says. "Too many other things at stake. If they know we're in Las Vegas, they know where we're going. Better to let them come to us."  
  
He takes a quick look a the purple shirt she's wearing and he gives it a nod. A little tight, but in a town like this, that'll be considered _fashion_ as opposed to stolen goods.  
  
  
She almost relaxes at his answer. Or as much as anyone who had just run from a gun toting assassin posing as a cab driver can relax, and she hands over the envelope, along with the remains of her earlier disguise. "There should be a bin inside the shop to dispose of that too," she instructs. "Best not to leave everything in this car. I'll double around the other side and leave the bag in the opposite direction while you shop."  
  
A quirk of the lips, almost a wry smile, at that.  
  
  
He slips a few of the bills into his pocket and puts the rest of the envelope in his jacket. It's a _lot_ of money, he realizes. More than he'd originally anticipated, not that he'd admit that to the Woman.  
  
He gives her a nod, and starts towards the shop, depositing the shirt into the bin on his way. He opens the door and starts to peruse the touristy items, before settling on a hat and a scarf, something to mix up his own look, and two new mobiles. After a moment, he also picks up a cheap brush for the Woman. She'll probably pull her hair down in order to change her look.  
  
Afterwards, he steps back outside and lights a cigarette. He hasn't had one since he first saw the Woman again, hasn't _needed_ one.


	2. A Palace Detour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having already been waylaid once by an individual who knew where to look, Sherlock and Irene must determine who knows they are neither as dead as they appear and at the same time appear as ordinary as any other temporary denizen of Las Vegas.

She's careful, going two blocks in the opposite direction of the Strip. She swaps the pants for a pair of leggings from the bag before tossing the bag and the pants into a dumpster behind a restaurant. Her hair comes down and she doesn't bother to rearrange it. She dislikes the feel of her hair loose, but between the too-tight, too-trendy clothes and the disheveled hair, she looks precisely like the sort of woman having far too good a time in Las Vegas, nothing like the dominatrix or the opera diva.  
  
No one would expect her to have far too much cash and stolen antique jewelry in her purse.  
  
She doubles back to the car, keeping an eye out for anyone suspicious, just in time to see him light the cigarette. "Are you planning on sharing?" she drawls (in a Southern accent studied only from American television) as she approaches.

It's impressive how quickly she's changed her look. The leggings rather than the trousers, the tousled hair, the slightly tight shirt. Had he been anyone other than Sherlock Holmes, he might've even thought she was a different person from the new swagger she's added to her hips. He pulls on the baseball cap and scarf and looks like a classic tourist, just about blending in. She just changes and becomes someone new.

  
  
He's impressed, and the slight smirk on his lips betrays that.  
  
"Thought you only smoked lights," he replies in his own Southern American accent (his, slightly Louisiana. John did watch a great deal of that Southern Vampire television show, after all.) He offers his lit cigarette to her.  
  
  
She takes the cigarette from him with fingers that are just a touch unfamiliar with the gesture. It isn't a recently rediscovered habit for her, though she draws from the lit cigarette without coughing and exhales neatly. Not unfamiliar with the vice, but clearly one she hasn't indulged in in a while.  
  
Irene passes the cigarette back with an amused grin. For once she isn't sure if either of their accents would fool a native, having never made it to the American South, but she suspects they were good enough to fool those whose only exposure were from films and television.

She begins walking away from the car, towards the glittering neon and lights of the Vegas Strip and its surrealist skyline shared by both the Eiffel Tower and a pair of obsidian pyramids. "We're in Vegas, sugar. I can live a little."

  
  
  
He slips a hand around her waist as he catches up with her, a gesture that's both intimate and a bit demanding, something he expects a lot of the Americans here might see from a tourist with an accent.

They've got a block until the Strip, and then not much farther to Caesars.

  
  
"I might get my hair trimmed a bit when we're there," he says, keeping with the accent. "And a change of wardrobe, but not much more than that. They won't approach us once we've gotten to the casino. Too risky."

 

She sways towards him at the arm around her waist and back away again, as if the gesture momentarily unbalances her. The motion brings her up against something in his pocket, something thin and crushable. A receipt, or some bit of paper?  
  
Irene nods, but adds, in the same drawling accent of soft vowels, "You keep saying 'they' and not sharing. It makes a woman suspicious."  
  
  
"Mmmm, probably should be," he says. "We've got a tail."

He says the last bit quietly, with a tone that says he could be talking about the weather, or how nicely the outfit she's wearing fits her arse. The photographs are relevant. He'll need them later, and he'll need her later, too. To figure out what he missed.

  
  
Whoever knows they're alive can't be too far away.  
  
The Strip is brightly lit and full of bustling people. It'll be busier at night, Sherlock knows, but until then, the warmth of the Nevada air has brought a lot of tourists here. The people around them will just assume he and the Woman are a couple wandering about.  
  
  
She feigns a laugh at his words, matching the light, negligent tone he uses. "There wasn't anyone on the plane from Belgrade," she answers, resisting the instinctive urge to look over her shoulder.  
  
As they near the Strip, it's easier to hide in plain sight, just another pair of tourists. She gestures at the false New York skyline of one of the hotels, as if astonished by its accuracy and presence. "Baltimore, perhaps."  
  
  
"And we'd have gone a four-hour flight without _me_ noticing?" he asks, tone still light despite the disbelief in it. He considers himself nothing if not self-aware, and he's aware of his own observational skills. He would not have missed someone watching for them on the entire flight.

  
  
"Had to have been beforehand," he says. "That taxi was waiting for us."  
  
  
She tries not to frown, because it would spoil the light tone, the careful fiction they're spinning, but her lips thin, and there is a thoughtful look in her eyes. She tries to remind herself that between the two of them they would have noticed _something_ , but it is hard to ignore the fact that part of the reason the journey had been so painless had been because of the game, the fact that at least part of their attention had been focused on each other. On catching slips and playing the _game_.

  
  
"Or there wasn't a tail at all," she speculates. "If they knew we were planning on coming here, they wouldn't have had to."  
  
  
"No," he says. "Someone is definitely following us, and once we get somewhere secure, I can find out who."  
  
  
The crowd is denser now, and Irene is torn between increased caution and knowing that the Strip is too full of witnesses for anything to happen. She glances along the wide, bustling street at the gaudy hotels that line both sides of the boulevard and steers them towards their initial destination.  
  
"'Secure' seems a bit optimistic, don't you think? How about just 'busy' and 'well wired with security cameras?"  
  
  
"No, not where I need to go," he says. "I have to find somewhere actually _secure_."  
  
He would just brush her off, the way he brushed off Dr. Stapleton back at Baskerville, but he decides that, of all people, she might understand the technique and why it works.

 

"It's a memory technique. Mycroft has used it for years. If your whole mind is a room or a house or a palace, then you can go back and find everything you've ever known. It's a way to not have to delete unnecessary things, just store them away. Therefore, if I can get to somewhere relatively secure and look through my mind, I should be able to see exactly who is following us based on what we have."  
  
  
His explanation makes a significant amount of sense, and Irene's brow furrows in contemplation. Hotels are too private at the moment, their disguises too hastily thrown together, for security. They need security but among enough people that whoever is searching for them won't dare make a move for fear of the publicity...  
  
The answer is obvious.  
  
"I know a place." Her steps don't deviate from their course. Privacy and security in the middle of a bustling crowd. Money enough to buy it. A hint of a laugh. "Two, if you don't distract easily."  
  
  
His brows knit together briefly, but he relaxes immediately. He can handle some distractions. He simply doesn't want to move or talk while he was in his Mind Palace. He doesn't like people around he doesn't trust, and John generally became bored after waiting for Sherlock to start acknowledging him again, so Sherlock often did this technique on his own.  
  
The Woman, though... he _can't_ trust her, that would be absurd. But---he _wants_ to trust her. She is, in fact, the only human alive apart from Molly Hooper that even knows he is alive.  
  
"Where?"  
  
  
The false colonnade and marble statuary of Caesars Palace appears ahead. Irene bypasses the main entrance into the hotel for the ornate entry to the Forum Shops, the air conditioning within far more comfortable, even if the falsely painted ceiling depicting a cloud-dotted sky lacks a certain warmth.

  
"I need new clothing, and you need a place to think that is busy enough to keep from attracting the wrong attention. Answer's obvious, isn't it?" She smiles, and for a moment the Southern accent slips as she murmurs, "Bored, irritable significant others are a dime a dozen in boutiques. Nobody will bat an eye even if you make a scene."  
  
  
It's a good idea. It's better than a good idea. Even though he'd hoped to rid himself of the clothes he was wearing, it would be enough to be able to piece together where the photographer had been when he---or she---had taken the photograph of them.  
  
"Good," he says. "And it might take a while, though I doubt that will be a problem for you here."

Not to mention if she puts together her disguise first, he'll have to conform. Irene weaves around a businessman exiting a jewelry shop (expensive present for the wife, gaudy trinket for the mistress) and laughs again, the Southern drawl gliding back into place.

  
"If I get bored, you'll get distracted."

"Sounds like a challenge against my concentration," he says with a small smirk. He doesn't really know how long he goes into his Mind Palace for, but he does know that when he comes out, John is usually gone and annoyed with him. He'll have to do some timing next time. It would be an interesting experiment.

  
  
"You lead," he says. "Tell me where to go."

Her smile deepens, sharp and incongruous against the soft drawling accent, and she shifts against him, her hand reaching for his at her hip, her fingers twining with his as she sways away from him again, tugging him through the crowd.  
  
It's a simple disguise, one of giddy involvement, sold in tiny intimate gestures, easy touches. Nobody looks twice at couples in Vegas. She leads him to the storefront of a well-known designer, its interior polished and quiet, accented with a beige tartan.

  
One of the saleswomen meets Irene's eye, and in two seconds has already slotted them into her mind. Couple, sudden windfall, long-suffering man needs a comfortable chair, woman to rack up a hefty commission from.  
  
Irene's eyes all but gleam as she watches the minute shifts in the saleswoman's eyes, at the avaricious smile that curls across her face. Perfect.

She gives Sherlock a sidelong look, as the saleswoman begins murmuring helpfully, gesturing them towards the more private dressing rooms near the back, and drawls, "If you're going to indulge me, sugar, I might as well take advantage."  
  
  
He looks the saleswoman over briefly. He doesn't see what she's thinking the way the Woman might, but he can immediately tell that she lives in a high-end area and her boyfriend works as a dancer and she has one cat that is particularly affectionate. Also, she is university educated, a right hander, loves ice cream, and is living well on her commission  
  
She'll focus on the Woman and leave Sherlock alone. Perfect.

 

He gives her a tight-lipped smile. "If it'll make you happy."

The dressing rooms aren't private, but they do give the illusion of privacy, with solid walls and a door cordoning off the dressing area rather than flimsy curtains, and half walls that provided alcoves for well-appointed couches and armchairs. Irene draws the saleswoman into easy, frivolous conversation, the sort of thing the saleswoman has heard a thousand times over, the inane subjects Irene knows she expects to hear; the saleswoman can respond with half a mind as her fingers run unconsciously over an overly affectionate bite or scratch from her cat.  
  
The empty conversation allows Irene to keep an eye on her companion and whatever it is his memory technique entails, even as the saleswoman plies Irene with clothes and accessories (out of habit, she tries on clothes that fit like a familiar glove, and some that were a better disguise).  
  
  
He slips the pictures out of his pocket and takes a look at them. There are two, both taken in Kotor. The first is at the entrance to the opera house. There's the Woman, fluid and radiant in her dress, and Sherlock, looking just a shade of awkward in his tuxedo as his alias would've allowed. Someone saw them here, of course. There were a lot of people at the entrance to the opera house. It was a matter of remembering who was looking at them from this angle and when.  
  
He closes his eyes and focuses. The opera house, the exact still frame floats into his mind, seemingly filling the room with its information rather than the clothes and trinkets of this shop. He puts the pictures face down on his lap and looks around himself. Focuses on the walls and the places within this room of his Mind Palace.

 

 _Your deductions_ , he remembers himself saying.  
  
 _Failed theatre actor. Bitter. Unhappy. Hovers around what he can't have. Harbors delusions of being aggressive and domineering._

 

Her voice floats in like the strings of a violin, and as she opens her mouth to speak again she freezes, the exact portrait within the photograph.

  
Sherlock raises his hands, and as he does, the scene shifts with his movement, as though he were dragging a cursor along a map and pulling it around. He pulls and twists, and spins 180 degrees around until he is facing where the photograph is taken. He remembers the driver, he remembers the people walking along the street, but the person who is taking the photograph---he can see the direction, and he can see the dark car with the window down, but he does not see their photographer.  
  
He waves his hand and slices the car out of his memory, pulling it forward and refiling it.

 

Her attention is divided. She devotes enough of it to placate the saleswoman and make the right answers, to consider the clothes and what disguise she would have to don to wear them, and whether or not they suit her current disguise to buy them. Some of her attention remains on Sherlock, on the glimpses she catches of him gesticulating at seemingly nothing, on twitches of musculature, at the two photographs, their contents hidden against his leg.  
  
And enough of her attention remains on the entrance to the boutique, watching for anyone else entering. Their near escape had been a reminder that together, despite their skills at disguise and at understanding and manipulating the world around them, they _could_ still be spotted.  
  
Irene murmurs something at the saleswoman and sends her off for some expensive belt she'd seen on a mannequin, smirking privately at the way the woman's eyes glitter, already mentally tallying the resultant commission. It gives her a minute too, to gather her own thoughts, to marshal her divided attention again. One thing is certain - she is dropping the Southern accent as soon as she could. It is far too soft, too full of drawling vowels, for her liking. She eyes her reflection critically, at the same time ensuring Sherlock is thoroughly engrossed in his memories, and takes a few steps back, ostensibly to get a better view, but also allowing her the opportunity to reach the photographs and see for herself.  
  
  
It is at this moment that he flips the photographs over so he can look at the second. This is just outside of the car, him with his newly darkened hair, her with hers pulled up, still fresh from the theft. He has his hand on her wrist and his mouth near her throat, she has the ghost of a laugh on her lips.

 

 _Tired of asking, I see_ , she had said.  
  
 _I approve. Not that it was what you were looking for._

 

His mouth moves to touch her throat, partially out of a desire to maintain the giggly lovers for the driver, and partially because of the beat of adrenaline within his own veins. He knows what happens next in the memory, the hum of approval she gives still buzzing against his lips, but he freezes it _there_ , at the exact moment of the photograph, and begins to spin it around as well.  
  
In this memory, he knows there are huge swaths of blank spaces, his mind completely distracted by the feel of the Woman he was holding against the car. As he spins the memory around, he can see the gray area behind him, a little to the left of him. If he scrolls forward a few seconds, even more of the memory vanishes, as he becomes more engrossed in _her_ and less in everything around them.

  
He lets out an annoyed sound, and shoves the whole memory away. There has to be _something_ else, something closer. Something before this photograph was taken. He spins the memory backwards, as the Woman was climbing down, before he became focused on her. He spins it, then freezes it, and pulls forward the street of people at the end of the alley. With a strong enough lens, that intimate photograph could easily have been taken. He moves frame by frame until he sees it. A young woman holding a phone. Looks like a tourist but isn't. A cameraphone. She looks like she's texting, but she's snapping dozens of photographs of the two of them in the moments where they are distracted.  
  
He snips the image of her and pulls it aside. Young, long dark hair. She's wearing dark sunglasses, but the shape of her jawbone and cheek show she has Chinese in her ancestry. A dozen images appear next to hers, potential people she could be.

 

Her eyes widen at the photos. Some little part of her had hoped, had _expected_ , that he had read the clues off the set of the cab driver's sunglasses, or the way his hair had been trimmed. A theory based on those minute things could perhaps have been dismissed as paranoia. But she of all people knows photographs are proof, are _evidence_.  
  
He's distracted, in his mind house-- no, mind _palace_ , he's too arrogant for anything but-- and the saleswoman is still fetching things. Irene takes the opportunity to pick up the photographs, examining them with a critical eye and increasingly furrowed brow. The first is crisp, professional. Quick exposure, or a steady camera. A good vantage point, perhaps.  
  
The second one though, she recognizes the telltale blur around the periphery, handheld camera, perhaps a cameraphone, taken quickly and surreptitiously. It is something she has learned early on in her information gathering to compensate for, lest the information she took photographs of couldn't be read.  
  
But beyond that, Irene has little to go. A movement at the corner of her field of vision catches her eye and Irene sets the photos back on his leg, facedown, lest the saleswoman wonder. She tries not to think about how utterly _ordinary_ they had looked in the second photograph, how even the impersonal camera had made them appear like nothing more than giddy lovers.  
  
  
He lines up the potential people and works out who are in jail and who are out. Who could travel, who couldn't. Narrows it down to four. Four potential.

  
He slips out of his Mind Palace and tucks the photographs back in his pocket. They're slightly askew. The Woman, perhaps. Or perhaps his leg simply shifted. It doesn't matter. He slips back into the role of the boyfriend, waiting.  
  
"Nearly done, dear?"  
  
  
She is frowning at the mirror again, allowing the saleswoman to fuss about her, when he stirs, and she nods, as if distracted by her own reflection. "I'll take those three," she says to the saleswoman, who nods and begins gathering up the indicated choices, and Irene slips back into the dressing room to return to her hasty disguise. Too risky, with the saleswoman there, to change again.

"Getting bored already?" she answers to his query. "I was going to have Eliza find a few things for you, since we're here and all."  
  
  
"I think the term is ' _been_ bored already'. Honestly, I don't need anything new. Everything here is so _boring_."

  
He sits up and stretches, and then begins to peruse. He has no interest in what the saleswoman might pick out for him, but he takes a look at what the Woman has selected and picks up a jacket and trouser set that would match it.  
  
"I mean, if you must."  
  
  
There's a rustle of cloth as Irene finishes changing, leaving the last dress in a heap on the dressing room floor for Eliza to pick up and pack along with the rest. As she exits the dressing room, the saleswoman ducks in, and notices the clothes in Sherlock's hands.  
  
"Oh, you _definitely_ need to try that on," Eliza says, clearing the last of Irene's purchases off the floor. She was really the consummate salesperson, effective and solicitous with a willing client, and stubbornly firm with an unwilling one. "It doesn't look nearly the same on the rack as it does on a person."

  
Irene meets Sherlock's eye, and hers positively dance with sudden amusement as she drawls, "I can't argue with her. She might find you the right shirt too."  
  
  
"Dear, just pick a shirt. I don't have to have something perfect," he says. He lets out a grumpy, irritable groan and grabs a shirt off of the rack.  
  
He'd be much happier in a tailor shop, but the time that would take would be out of the question. He sighs, and gives the Woman a pathetic look.  
  
  
And she simply gives him a look back of intense amusement, stepping back and letting the saleswoman chivvy him towards the dressing room. Irene takes a seat on the couch, curling her legs beneath her.  
  
"Of course you do, sugar. Just try on three," she cajoles, though there is a familiar undertone in her voice, behind the soft slur of the accent. "Or I'll have to come in there."  
  
  
"You do know I could just tell you I tried them on and we could move on from there," he says in the accent, but with a hint of his very own smirk. He reaches out for a few shirts he noticed, and a belt, and lets out a very put-upon sigh before heading back towards the dressing rooms.  
  
He'll never admit he prefers nicer clothes anyway. It wouldn't fit with the alias.  
  
  
"Then I'd make you come out in each one," she answers, her amusement obvious. The saleswoman nods and steps away, sweeping away detritus and packing up the pieces Irene had picked out.  
  
"You'd just be making it hard for yourself."  
  
  
"Oh, don't make me," he says, looking somewhat pitiful.  
  
  
"I could strip you myself."  
  
The accent doesn't slip, but he would recognize The Woman's hand in that more than the Southern belle.  
  
  
"I doubt that would affect my decision about twirling about in clothing I'm already very likely to buy," he says, raising an eyebrow. The accent is correct, but even he can tell that he is dramatically out of character. He shakes his head, as though that's something he would expect someone else they both know to say---an inside joke, of sorts.  
  
There's a slight ring as the door opens again, and a young woman enters the shop. Sherlock would have immediately dismissed her, except for what he'd just seen in his Mind Palace. Young woman, Chinese descent, sunglasses. Not the same from before---that's obvious from the size of her shoulders and hips, but her cameraphone is identical. Could be coincidence, but Sherlock isn't about to take that chance.  
  
She's looking around the shop, as if inspecting the clothes, but clearly looking for someone. Sherlock gestures to the Woman, and quickly vanishes into the dressing room.

 


	3. An Exhibitionist Streak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The individuals tracking the ghosts of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler take shape, but the question remains whether they are being tracked by a handful of enterprising individuals, or is something bigger in the works?

She wonders briefly if he realizes that his body language gives him away, the quick, darting eyes, the sparse, economical motions. Irene glances back, trying to see what he'd seen, but notices nothing but a woman, dark haired and wearing the current trend in sunglasses.  
  
But he is gesturing and disappearing into the dressing room, and Irene gives the dressing area one more look, reminds herself of what their disguises had done, looked like-- No, Eliza the saleswoman would not be surprised at all by this turn of events.  
  
That certainty decides it for her, and Irene follows him into the dressing room, closing the door firmly behind her.  
  
"I'm starting to think you have an exhibitionist streak."  
  
  
"Considering our reaction last time we ended up surrounded by coats..." He glances over to her, the ghost of a smile on his lips. This game is distracting and diverting, and only made better by the company.  
  
He peers out the slit in the dressing room as the girl begins checking around for anyone who might be hiding somewhere. Sherlock moves to sit on the bench, keeping his feet from view. A female occupant with an American accent is expected. A male one within would make them curious.  
  
  
Her own smile grows at the ghost of a smile on his lips, though his attention on the slit in the dressing room draws her own as well. She notes the way he keeps his feet out of sight, and expects that any more words, no matter how carefully whispered, could give away the game.  
  
So instead of speaking, she steps closer to him and arches a questioning eyebrow as she gestures to the door.  
  
  
As she leans towards him, he reaches out for her hand. Instead of taking it, he presses his forefinger to her wrist and taps out Morse code.  
  
.--. --- ... ... .. -... .-.. . ... ..- ... .--. . -.-. - .-.-.-  
  
Possible suspect.  
  
More will have to be explained later, of course. But he can't just give her the images in his head, any more than he could simply express the things he sees to the police or to John Watson. He stays silent and waits, nodding back to the slit in the door.  
  
  
Tap.Tap.Tap.  
  
Her brow furrows in momentary concentration as she recognizes his answer. And it takes another second to realize what he is referring to. Instead of responding in kind, she reaches into his pocket, hand cool against the fabric, and produces the photographs.  
  
She holds them both up with one hand, the other tapping a measured rhythm:  
\- --- --- -.- / --- -. . / --- .-. / -... --- - .... ..--..  
  
 _Took one, or both?_

Of course she'd seen the photographs. He would rather not insult her intelligence by asking her how she knew---he'll work that out eventually.  
  
He points to the second, the more intimate cameraphone photograph, and then peers back into the slit on the door. She's making her rounds by the dressing rooms, cautiously peering under to see how many feet and what sort of feet. Obvious, now that he knows what he's looking for.  
  
He should never have dropped his guard in the first place. Picking up the Woman and bringing her along, that's more of _luxury_ , a holiday away from being alone. He's always said he needs an assistant when it comes to cases, but being with the Woman is like having a partner, one on his level. It makes him focused on her just as much as he should be on their surroundings.  
  
  
The cameraphone photo with its blurred edges. A thought occurs to Irene and she slips out of her shoes, leaving them out of sight on the bench with the detective.  
  
Those had been the one part of her last disguise in Montenegro she had not yet discarded, and one pair of bare feet in a dressing room is something to be expected. Another thought occurs to her.  
  
.-. . .-.. .- - . -.. / - --- / - .... . / .. -.. .. --- - / .--. .- .--. .- .-. .- --.. --.. --- ..--..  
  
 _Related to the idiot paparazzo?  
  
  
_ He shakes his head. The paparazzo was far too stupid. He didn't know what he had, while these photographers clearly do. So who are they? And how did they know?  
  
The girl walks past the dressing room, pausing only for a second before continuing onwards. They will both need new shoes, and Sherlock's hair is going to be a problem back in its natural dark state---but he _has_ to have the dark hair in order to fit with his plan. And the plan _must_ happen. Every piece of the web has to be put down, no matter what. It's what he lives for. Rather, it's what he's _dead_ for.  
  
There's a chime as the girl leaves the shop, and Sherlock nods cautiously.  
  
"We won't be able to stay hidden for very long. If they're related at all to Moriarty, they'll know the casino we're headed to."

  
  
Irene looks thoughtful as she peers through the slit in the dressing room door. She doesn't leave yet, instead waiting for a count of twenty, just in case the potential photographer returns.  
  
"Then why bother hiding?" she asks practically. "We can force them to come to us."  
  
  
If only it were that simple. Sherlock knows of sixteen different assassins in the Las Vegas area who could potentially be called upon to kill them. And that doesn't include the cab driver they got away from.  
  
All the same, the Woman is right. They're better off picking them apart, too.  
  
He can hear footsteps. The saleswoman, coming to check on them.  
  
  
The saleswoman pauses to their left and coughs discreetly. No doubt she thinks she's seen this before. Irene smirks, grabbing the front of Sherlock's shirt, pulling him to her, and kissing him roughly.  
  
She steps back, not bothering to unwrinkle his shirt, and murmurs as she reaches for the door, "Be a good boy and try them on."  
  
  
"You make it as though I'm a dog," he replies as she gets to the door. She unravels him. She does it and she doesn't even realize just how dangerous it all is. Even now, even being dead for as long as she has been, she doesn't know what they could do. What they would do to her.  
  
If Moriarty knew the Woman was alive, death would be the prize at the end of a terrible ordeal. The absence of John Watson and his friends would be devastating to Sherlock, but he spent many months without the Woman. No, she would have something special from Jim, who didn't like being beaten at his own games. Sherlock swallows as his mind follows where Moriarty would take it, and how he'd present it to Sherlock. Like a present, like a trophy.  
  
He doesn't try on the shirts, but he knows they will fit. He pulls them off of their hangers and steps out into the shop again. Shoes. He will need shoes.

  
  
She simply smiles at his protest, she remembers clearly how, a seeming lifetime ago, she'd threatened to put him on a leash.  
  
As he reappears, stubborn and obstinate as always, she is already sliding on a pair of heeled sandals. Terrible for running in, but practicality had its place and Las Vegas isn't one of them.  
  
The saleswoman gestures at the shirts in Sherlock's hand and Irene nods, murmuring something to the saleswoman and pressing a stack of bills into her hand. The woman's fingers twitch beneath her hand, itching to count them, but she refrains.  
  
Irene gives him a questioning look, as something in his expression gives him pause, but the Southern drawl is firmly on her tongue again when she asks, "Now that wasn't so bad, now was it, sugar?"  
  
  
He can't quite bring the smile to his eyes. "Oh, all right, all right, I'll take them. But no ties, I don't wear ties. I don't care where we're going."  
  
He looks at a few of the shoes, before settling on a set of textured leather lace-ups. He'd need a watch, too, but not here. They couldn't just look like they'd stepped out of a catalog. He laces them up and hops about, as though checking if he could do absolutely anything in them. What was it Americans used shoes for? Fishing, probably.  
  
He scooped up his old shoes and dropped them into the bin. They were comfortable and well broken in, but hardly what he'd need here.  
  
"Ready, dear?"  
  
  
A ghost of a question lingers in her eyes at the not-quite-there smile he gives in response. But she doesn't ask, because to ask is to admit she doesn't know, and there is far far too much pride in her to admit such a thing to him, of all people.  
  
Instead she simply takes the laden bags the saleswoman hands over, and nods. "To the hotel, I think. You look like I've just sent you off to face Sherman."  
  
Did the Southerners still revere that war? She thought she'd seen that they did, somewhere.  
  
  
Sherlock looks at her, eyes a little wide. Sherman. Who the hell is Sherman? He silently begged that she wasn't referencing some sort of popular culture he'd deleted.  
  
"All right, yes, fine. Hotel."  
  
He held the door for her and slipped his arm around her waist as they exited. He kept his eyes on everyone around them. No sign of the girl with the camera from before, but that didn't mean there wasn't a car with a camera waiting for them somewhere else.  
  
"Sherman," he repeats.  
  
  
"American Civil War. He takes Atlanta. Southerners are still quite incensed by the whole idea, I hear," she murmurs. It's easy to lean into the touch around her waist, and if she thought about it for very long she'd be bothered, she'd realize it was too easy, that he'd gotten far too beneath her skin. But she doesn't, because this is far too pleasant, and she consoles herself that it is simply playing the game, playing the part.  
  
She continues quietly, the level of noise around them allowing her to drop the worst of the accent, "They'll expect us to go to ground for as long as possible. We should be able to catch them unaware if we don't."  
  
  
American Civil War. They had a civil war? Sherlock has no idea what she's referring to, but figures it must be something deleted and moves on.  
  
He nods, as if to tell her she's right without actually having to admit that she's right. They do need to get above ground for a few moments. Not long enough to get noticed by anyone else, not enough to be seen by the public, but just enough to throw their assassins off for a while until they can get out of Las Vegas.  
  
"You're aware of the plan?" he asks.  
  
  
"Yours or theirs?"  
  
She has her own plans, of course, but they were longer ranging, farther off. She was even less anchored than he was, having not even A Cause to drive her in death. It was why she told herself she could afford this detour, this holiday from being the late Irene Adler. That she could simply pick up exactly where she left off, whenever she wanted, that she could simply vanish from Las Vegas or Sydney and slip back into her next disguise.  
  
It was a lie, and a part of her knew it. But she was here and he was far more interesting than anyone else she could have met in Montenegro.  
  
  
"Their plan involves killing us, I think," he says. Unless they worked for Jim. Sherlock wants to not think about it, but it's important that it stays in the back of his mind as a definite possibility. It changes everything.  
  
"Mine involves turning the casino owner against himself," he says. "And planting him with a very specific murder weapon at the time when the police arrive. They're incompetent here, but if you gift-wrap it all for them, they'll be satisfied. Casino goes under, very few have to die for it."  
  
Very few, but _a few_. Death was inevitable in this plan for some, but he continues to remind himself that it's worth it. Worth the plan.

 

"Is _that_ what the knife from Kotor was for," she murmurs. It's a confirmation more than a question, though her expression grows thoughtful as she follows the steps through. Murder, the murder weapon and the casino owner. Investigation.  
  
"I expect the victim will be whoever is most poised to take over the casino if the owner falls. Leave the rest of them scrambling for power as the casino goes under."  
  
Of course, it would be a shame for all the casino's assets to be seized by the government. She could make a few calls. The prospect of that makes her smile, and her eyes positively glitter. "First the finance minister and now the casino mogul? You're becoming positively blood thirsty."  
  
  
He rolls his eyes. "Hardly. There's nothing diverting in _being_ the murderer."  
  
This is, of course, a lie. There's a lot that's diverting in being a murderer, or in plotting the destruction of this web. He just believes that if he deletes the fact that it _is_ diverting, he'll be able to go back to the life he knows in 221b when he gets back. It's all waiting for him there, so long as he can do this and do it quickly. And the Woman---  
  
The Woman will still be dead. And he will never see her again, as he'd told himself when he left her in Karachi in order to clean up for Mycroft's arrival. He was all right with it, then.  
  
"The son will be the murder victim," Sherlock says. "And actually, it's not _me_ that will do it. His father will use the opportunity and take advantage of the situation. If it's timed right, we might even be able to get the police in there before he's murdered his son."  
  
Not that that fact matters.  
  
  
She simply gives him a sidelong look at the denial, and weaves their way through the Forum Shops, avoiding tourists when she can and simply forcing them out of her way when she cannot. She knows the planning of the murder is diverting for him, just like the planning of the thefts had been for her. Neither their preferred entertainments but then the dead are perhaps even more limited than beggars.  
  
"Positively Shakespearean. I like it." Up the stairs of the Forum shops, back out into the Las Vegas heat. Irene continues, heading straight for a large hotel nearby, its facade dominated by two very large pirate ships out front. "One night, maybe two, before we tempt the intrepid photographers again?"  
  
  
He nods, following her. He catches her arm to pull her into a Hamilton shop to buy a new watch before they head to the hotel. He turns around as they leave, oblivious to the new photographs being taken of the two of them, and how they focused on the Woman more than on Sherlock. The target.


	4. Limited Engagement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With unknown assailants on their trail, Irene and Sherlock must go to ground and regroup before they attempt to pull off the murder of one of the late Jim Moriarty's colleagues.

Sherlock glances to the side to see that there are public computers available in the hotel lobby. His mobile doesn't have the internet, and it's been a while since he's done some research. He'll take a look later.  
  
"We'll need to get some jewelry before we go to the casino," he says as they get to the hotel desk.  
  
  
Despite her best efforts to stay aware of their surroundings, Irene is equally oblivious to the photographs being taken. The glitzy city is too crowded, too unfamiliar, to keep complete track of. As they make their way to the front desk, Irene sets the small purse, containing nothing but money and two pieces of stolen antique jewelry, on the desk and sends the concierge scrambling to find a room on the top floor of the tower.  
  
"Do we?" she asks, the laughter in her eyes belying the seemingly innocent question. "No longer interested in liberated antiques?"  
  
  
"Wedding rings," he says. "We're going to go in there as recent newlyweds. Me, the pushover husband, you, the aggressive new bride who wants to be in control of the money and company. I imagine you'll enjoy the chance to play the dominant woman again."  
  
Sherlock knew very well how to play the submissive. He had seen many husbands in that role, and he imagined it would make himself very appealing to their target.  
  
  
Her smile deepens and she leans against him to murmur, "I was wondering if you'd manage to say it at all."  
  
And even as she speaks, she reaches into the purse and slips a ring, antique gold with a center amethyst surrounded by diamonds, onto the fourth finger of her left hand. "And you say that like I ever stopped being dominating."  
  
  
"I haven't seen it," he says, with a little smirk. "I'll be ready to be impressed."  
  
  
The young man returns, murmuring apologies for the delay and how the management was doing its best, and slides over two electronic keys for a room on the top floor, as well as a pair of vouchers for free drinks.  
  
He hadn't been long, of course, but something about the way Irene had demanded had tugged at deep seated fears in his subconscious. She smiles and slides a stack of bills across the counter to him, the amethyst ring on her hand winking in the artificial light. Her attention is not on the concierge as she picks up the keys and vouchers and all the paperwork the young man hands over.  
  
"I'd say be careful what you wished for, but that would be giving fair warning."  
  
  
"And playing fair isn't your style," he agrees, taking a step away from the counter. "I doubt this would be the right place to _play_ , anyway."  
  
Which isn't true at all. Here is the _perfect_ place to play, with all of the people wrapped up in their insignificant trivialities and all the money and position within it. And the Woman would be ideal at playing these stupid people. Sherlock feels that familiar wave of arousal shoot through him at the idea, at watching her ruin the people around him.

  
  
"Playing fair would be to let him tell me they were booked solid for the week," she agrees as she steps away from the counter. The paperwork and all its legal wrangling over the hotel's complete lack of liability in case of any occurrence goes straight into the bin, and Irene slips one of the keycards into his pocket.  
  
"But I think we can put that room to better use than a politician and his mistress. She'll probably take it as a slight and threaten to expose him."  
  
  
"Could be useful," he agrees with a slight nod.  
  
He nods to the lift and leads the way. "We'll need time to prepare, of course. Create a solid backstory for our lives together."

  
  
She could have been satisfied with any other room, of course, if all they had needed was a place to go to ground. But Irene Adler preferred a certain amount of comfort, and the politician's love nest provided a certain amount of discretion, a certain amount of protection. The simple fact was she _enjoyed_ causing scandal was, in this case, simply a bonus.  
  
She waits until a lift clears and they have it to themselves before she answers. "I thought you'd planned this entire adventure down to the details already," she smirked. She knew full well he'd not planned for this, for them to be in Las Vegas together, but she still felt the need to needle him about it.   
  
"Americans again?"  
  
  
"No," he says with a slight smile. "There's only so much of that accent I can manage before I start to go hoarse. And in the casino, we won't stand out quite so much with the sheer number of international tourists."  
  
And he has an enormous plotted out, but he knows that the Woman will want to plot out her own ways in order to play the character correctly. He also knows that if he plans for her following his ideas completely he'll be immensely let down.

  
  
In the relative privacy of the lift, she takes a step back from him, leaning against the back wall of polished wood and mirror. It's easier to think this way, she's less distracted, and it is easier to gauge him with the proper perspective.  
  
"Not German. I make a terrible German," she dismisses. She studies him, and a smirk tugs at her lips. "Low-level Dutch diplomat stationed in Barcelona. Bored by his work and the rest of the idiots in his consulate. He wanders off one day and becomes smitten with a local."  
  
  
"My Dutch is repulsive," he replies. "The accent is absolutely obvious. Russian, perhaps. I know a bit of the language, so if need be I can hold a conversation."  
  
She's very distracting. He wants to move towards her again, wants to stop thinking about things that are pulling into his mind. This is a bad thing, even John would tell him so. Emotions will only ruin what he's trying to do.  
  
"A local from Barcelona who aspires for more than her little town could offer her," he agrees.  
  
  
Her Russian is better than her Spanish, but Irene doesn't bother mentioning it. She enjoys having her secrets, after all, and she expects this is one that would either be useful, or at the very least make for a very satisfying look of surprise on his face when it came to light.  
  
She does, however, make a face at his suggestion. "When you put it that way it sounds far too much like a romantic comedy. Ruthless Barcelonan social climber sounds far more likely. Seduced the poor Russian diplomat by playing helpless?"  
  
  
"Isn't that what I suggested?" Sherlock says, his eyebrows stitching together. He would expect nothing but ruthless from the Woman, though he has seen her play helpless before. And quite efficiently. He remembers, quite distinctly, how it felt to learn of her plan and how well he'd fallen into it. He couldn't help but be impressed. No, more than impressed. It stirred something in him, a sort of respect that very few held.  
  
"I'll distract the casino owner, while you give the rest of them something else to look at. Someone clever and dangerous they should worry about, while your hapless husband picks at the problem from the root."

  
  
She taps her fingers against the rail running along the back of the lift, drumming a nonsensical tune as she thinks.   
  
"The sort of people casino owners surround themselves with won't take well to dangerous and clever," she muses, "Lascivious and scandalous, perhaps. Something they're used to, that'll catch their attention but that they won't recall the details of a week down the line."  
  
  
"Isn't that what I suggested?"  
  
After all, the Woman's dangerous and clever side were what made her so very appealing in such a dangerous way. Before he could further explain, the lift makes a small noise signaling it had stopped at their floor. He glances at the small walkway to the top floor room, and then pulls out the card to open the door for her.  
  
"We should do an initial walkthrough of the casino tomorrow," he says. "See just how observant they are, make our presence known. And then stabilize there by getting a room."

  
  
That makes her laugh, an uncharacteristically genuine sound, as the doors to the lift open. That laughter and almost delighted amusement is long in fading as she allows him to open the door to the hotel room. Spacious, comfortable, lavish. Exactly the sort of place she expected. Though Irene does roll her eyes at the mirror mounted to the ceiling.  
  
Really. Politicians.  
  
"That'll be enough time to get a few whispers through the staff, a few ears to pass along information." A pause. "That'll take a few bribes. I should have pickpocketed the idiot on the plane who was leering at me."  
  
  
"Considering what you did acquire, I think it'll be more than sufficient until you get the funds from the ownerless casino transferred your way," he says. Before she can ask, he adds: "Bit obvious, though. Might draw attention to you. Would be better to transfer it into something material, which you can sell a year or so later."  
  
That was one thing the Woman did have: Time.  
  
"But this'll do for a day or two. Out of the way enough to keep any new assassins out of our hair." He pulls out his cigarette pack, only to uncover that it was empty. He crushes it out and throws it in the bin.

  
  
She raises an eyebrow in response, obviously curious how he'd figured that out, but at the addition merely shakes her head. She's fairly certain it's a guess. Based on available facts and his knowledge of her motives.   
  
Instead, Irene moves to the spacious wardrobe, hanging up the new purchases. There's a precision to her movements, everything in its place. "Already out?" she asks over her shoulder. "I'd only seen you smoke once in the past three days."  
  
  
"Apparently. I hadn't noticed," he replies. She's diverting. She knows this, however, and her words to him show that. He nods to the bed.  
  
"Get some rest. I'm going out to get more."

  
  
There's no reason to disagree, in fact there is sense in it. But to agree is to give in, and she enjoys being contrary far too much.   
  
"We'll see." A pause. "Try not falling out of any third story windows this time."  
  
  
"Ha," he replies. There should be a response there, but his mind is elsewhere, on things he desperately wants to do but doesn't want her to know about. Things he's promised himself he wouldn't do, but this hotel has left him the prime opportunity.  
  
"And what'll you have, then? Crisps, caviar, saline IV?"  
  
  
Something tugs at the edge of her consciousness, something important, something about his distraction, but it doesn't register yet, not with the hotel, the casino, the plans, the aliases, the photographer and the rest already vying for her attention. And she _is_ tired, dehydrated and jet-lagged from the long flights. It's enough to let too much slip.  
  
"I doubt even you could find a decent cup of tea in this place."  
  
  
"I'll see what I can manage," he says with a small smile that could very well be registered as affectionate. "Just rest."  
  
He steps outside and shuts the door behind himself.  
  
He doesn't return for two days.


	5. Pain in All Its Myriad Colours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Sherlock Holmes' sudden disappearance in Las Vegas, Irene Adler is faced with a choice: to continue their plan to clear the spider's web in Las Vegas or to run and disappear. But both would require an answer to the question of where he had gone.

By the second day, she's made plans.   
  
A new set of travel and identification documents sit neatly wrapped in a brown paper envelope, the old ones shredded in the wastebasket, a bottle of vodka from the minibar and a book of matches waiting on the table. The hotel room is heavy with the astringent, chemical scent of hair dye, and the clothes that had been bought two days ago remain hanging in the wardrobe, all except one purple dress and a small black purse, newly bought, those lay ready on the bed. The shower stops, the last of the dye-tinged water swirls down the drain, and Irene steps out of the shower, her hair now a rich, wine red.  
  
She slips on the dress and hesitates to pick up the purse. For a moment, she contemplates leaving the diamond necklace and the amethyst ring behind. But she reminds herself that they can be sold, that it is not sentiment but practicality that keeps them in her purse, and she tucks the travel documents in along with the jewelry.  
  
Vodka over the shredded paper, two matches on top. The entire mess shoved into the bathroom and its ventilation system to keep from triggering any fire alarms. One more stop, the Las Vegas morgue, then the airport again.  
  
Sydney was waiting.  
  
  
There's a click, and the door to the hotel room is opened very suddenly. In stalks one Sherlock Holmes, still dressed in the clothes he wore when he stepped out. His hair is scraggly, he's wearing dark sunglasses that cover dilated eyes and a slowly forming bruise, and there's a split along his bottom lip.  
  
An observant person would notice that he's strung out. Stimulants. Obvious. His preference being for cocaine and morphine in a lovely cocktail known as a "speedball". However, he's only been able to acquire the cocaine, which is good enough for a few hours at a time.  
  
He inhales.   
  
"Fire, obvious. Overworked shredder in use, also obvious. Dye, though, I wasn't expecting that." He lets out a laugh. "Leaving, yes, of course. Good idea, best to be leaving. Can't sniff out where Sherlock went, better make a run for it instead."  
  
This is not the affectionate, teasing man who left this room two days ago. Also obvious.  
  
  
Surprise, relief, realization, and irritation flit across her face in quick succession at the sight of him, and Irene's lips thin at his recitation. Her eyes are quick, taking in the state of his clothes, hair, split lip, sunglasses. Could be a disguise, but there's a harshness to it all that rang true.  
  
Binge then.  
  
She brushes past him brusquely to stand in front of the mirror, twisting her still damp, newly dyed hair into a tight knot at the base of her skull. "Just the cocaine, or did you manage to talk a desperate paramedic into the morphine too?" she snipes back.  
  
  
Of course she'd notice. The Woman always notices everything and that's the appeal. There's nothing about him right now that wants to be seduced by her, and his words are harsh.  
  
"We're leaving. I've got a car."  
  
  
" _I'm_ leaving," she corrects coldly, her attention seemingly still on her toilette even as her eyes follow him in the mirror. Despite the cool, brusque words, there's heated anger in her eyes.  
  
"If your plan for this casino isn't enough to keep your attention, it certainly isn't enough to keep mine."  
  
  
"And considering we're both being hunted, I'm certain you running off on your own is the fastest way to get yourself killed." It doesn't strike him as _ironic_ , saying that after running off on his own. And why would it? Right now, he is so blatantly out of control that he doesn't even care if he is out there with assassins on his own.  
  
There's no going home, after all.  
  
He's not going to argue with her. He grabs one of the paperweights shaped like a monkey from a side table and heads back to the door, which he opens and steps out of without any response back.  
  
  
She doesn't care.  
  
She can't afford to. But he's right and there are killers on their tail and if she lets him out in this state, likely as not they'll get to him (it's a bit of a surprise they haven't already) and then to her through him.  
  
She cares about being _alive_.  
  
With a growl of irritation, Irene follows, grabbing his wrist (why the monkey paperweight?) to spin him around. "And you're in a state enough that would get yourself killed," she hisses. There's a stumble before she adds, "And me after you."  
  
  
The stumble means something, and in the back of his mind he's linking it to white words like _sentiment_ and _getting too close_ and _dangerous_. She should have left after the first day he wasn't back, but she _waited_ and now she was concerned about him. Concerned that he'd stay alive.  
  
He doesn't struggle against the grip on his wrist, just stands there with her holding him.  
  
"Take your hands off of me," he says.  
  
  
"Or what, Mr. Holmes?" she snaps back coldly.  
  
Her grip doesn't tighten on his wrist, but it is iron firm. She has no illusions that she can hold him there by strength alone, but for the moment it gives her a better opportunity to study him up close. Her eyes narrow.  
  
Her memory is not as photographic as his, but she knows him in a way that is both more and less than how she knows other people. Sherlock Holmes is at once a mystery and a reflection in a dark mirror, and she knows enough of what makes him tick to begin putting together the change in behavior. The drugs were inconsequential. They were a response, not the cause. Window dressing. Ripples in the pond. The question was what had been the stone.  
  
Las Vegas itself? Hardly. The assassin in the cab? Doubtful. The photographs? Something about that resonated, but it wasn't it.  
  
"If you're going to make irrational demands, you should at least be able to back it up with a threat."  
  
  
"I've got four stone on you, Woman," he warns.  
  
He could hurt her. He knows this. The amount of buzzing in his head, he could easily go too far just prying her fingers from him. But he doesn't _want_ to, and those words are buzzing around his head, now. Sentiment. Trouble. Dangerous. It's all dangerous.  
  
"Thirty seconds ago you wanted to leave, now you want to stay?" Changing the subject is better than being asked to continue with the threat.

  
  
In his current state, he could no doubt do quite a bit of physical damage if pressed. But he resorts to a warning, and that in itself tells her more. High, but not impaired. Functional enough to acquire a car. To come back and make plans to leave. But stubbornly attempting to... _what_. Her mind goes over their last conversation, and nothing comes to mind except for a niggle of doubt, a tug at her subconscious that still hasn't fallen into place. _Cigarettes_.  
  
"Thirty seconds ago I wasn't risking exposure by--" By what? Anger is making blood pound in her veins and it is hard to think. "--an addict too busy chasing a fix to follow through on his own plans."  
  
  
The laugh he lets out is pained, and the emotion in it disgusts him. He shakes his head and tries to push away just how badly he hurts with a shake of his head, but all it does is disorient. The cocaine is supposed to make the hurt go away. When the first hit didn't work, he did another. Now, high out of his mind but still miserable, he's just aching for it to be fixed.  
  
"Addict. As if you have any room to talk. The dominatrix, the one who _misbehaves_."  
  
  
It could be the cocaine, but there's a note of something genuine in his laugh, something raw that resonates with the unmistakeable ring of truth. If she had been cooler headed she would have recognized it for exactly what it was. And been one step closer to realizing the cause of the entire tableau they were caught in.  
  
But blood is pounding in her ears and anger is easy. She _wants_ to be angry, angry at him for leaving and coming back, at herself for having stayed, at being _here_ in the first place rather than in Sydney. It is easier to be angry than to be relieved.  
  
"Is that supposed to be an insult? I'm not the one trying to hide behind a syringe."  
  
  
"Hides more than a disguise does," he says. The red hair, the exotic. It's a new disguise for the Woman, and he should be able to see more in it than he does and that frustrates him. It all frustrates him to the point where he wants to no longer care about any of it anymore.  
  
He's hiding behind his drugs and his disappointment, and she's hiding behind her anger. They might as well have those two wedding bands tattooed to themselves at this point.  
  
He tries again. "You don't understand, you wouldn't want to."  
  
  
The hand that isn't at his wrist twitches, as if she wants nothing more than to slap him for that answer, as if by doing so she could physically make sense of all the hints and all the puzzle pieces that are hovering at the edge of her consciousness.   
  
And it would _hurt_ and she realizes in a moment of crystalline clarity that she _wants_ to hurt him, for getting so far underneath her skin that she _worries_ and she hides it behind pounding blood and anger.  
  
So she does. A sharp crack of a practiced hand, right across the cheek.  
  
She doesn't cut herself on those cheekbones. But it hurts.  
  
  
His face moves with her slap, as he was completely unprepared for it. He should have been prepared, he realizes. He should have seen it coming, with all of that anger inside of her. He's left her alone and left her to boil and then come back expecting nothing but to _leave_.  
  
He feels a rush of _something_ go through him at the sting from her hand, and he realizes why people might like the "recreational scolding" Mycroft had mentioned that the Woman offered.  
  
He turns back to her, his jaw set.  
  
"Again?"  
  
  
"You'd enjoy it too much."  
  
What they had delicately referred to as 'recreational scolding' was different. That had always had little of her own emotion in it. Pleasure in inflicting pain divorced from sentiment. This, this was inflicting pain for far more visceral, far purer motives.  
  
And that just reminded her of how out of her control things had spun. The anger still burns beneath her skin, and she wants nothing more than to indulge it, to just push away the sting in her hand and find something other than--  
  
Ah.  
  
She releases his wrist from her grip, and takes a deliberate step away.  
  
  
He lets out another small bark of a laugh.  
  
"I thought you actually knew what people liked."  
  
His wrist released, he pulls open the door and steps out into the hall on his way to the lift. He finds himself hesitating. He can't hesitate. Hesitate, and things change.

  
  
Except things have already changed. Things had changed from Karachi, when they had been content to simply know there was someone out there like themselves somewhere in the world. Now they are here having a row in the middle of a stolen hotel room, with falsified travel documents burning in a washroom bin behind the door, like some other mundane couple wrapped far too around each other.  
  
All the pieces fall into place, with the same solidity as the knowledge of that hiker and the boomerang. The stone.   
  
But it's uncomfortable knowledge, because knowing him is to stare into a mirror darkly and recognize a similar truth in herself.  
  
"To pretend to be aloof. As if brains and cleverness make you so much different from everyone else and their petty concerns and their sentiment and their pain. And the high doesn't help."  
  
  
"Am I not?" he demands. "Different than everyone else. Isn't that why you're here? Because here you don't have to cater to the whims of the pathetic, because there's someone who _accepts_ you in all of your differentness."  
  
The rawness of his voice is embarrassing. He can't silence it, though, can't make it go away. The high and the adrenaline and it all just infuriates him. He turns and throws the monkey statue as hard as he can, and it shatters a mirror aligning the bed, spreading slivers of glass across the floor.  
  
It's such a _base_ thing, this kind of anger. The Woman isn't the one who he'd want to see him like this.  
  
  
She flinches at the sound of shattering glass and a little part of her mind is cataloging what housekeeping will think, what the hotel staff would think, and whether or not it will endanger their cover. A door down the hall opens, and a woman with platinum blonde hair sticks her head out, attracted by the noise. _She_ doesn't need cleverness or deduction or discernment to read the scene. A glance, and she closes the door again.  
  
Irene barely notices.   
  
"We're making a scene," she notes. There's a deliberate, brittle calm to her words that she doesn't bother to hide. And the 'we' is the only acknowledgment she will allow herself.  
  
  
He widens his eyes, a sort of mania behind them he doesn't allow himself. He _never_ allows himself this.  
  
"I don't care," he says. And he wouldn't, if the Woman were not standing there. Standing there, vulnerable, ready to die if someone sees her. A painted target with new, red hair.  
  
He swallows and takes in a breath through his nose, calming himself.  
  
"Leave with me," he says, his voice now forced to calmness.

  
  
He's high, manic, and still asking.  
  
As much as she thrills to press him, to draw emotion out from behind that mask of cold intellect and aloofness, the fact that he still asks, with all his control and her masks cast off by anger and drugs, this scares her. This is vulnerability in the same gut-wrenching visceral way she'd only been exposed by one other time.  
  
And as much as she knows this is untenable, that this travel, this quest of his will end and he will return to Baker Street and she will remain quietly dead, that she should say no and walk away before it hurts even worse.  
  
 _Be Irene Adler again._  
  
She can't walk away. Not yet. She needs to remember what it is like to be Irene Adler, to be extraordinary without hiding.  
  
"Would you still leave if I said no?"  
  
  
"Yes."  
  
His voice is cold, the way he said 'yes' when she asked him if he expected her to beg. It's a coldness he doesn't feel, the way he didn't feel it back in Mycroft's office.  
  
Sorry about dinner.  
  
Sorry about this holiday from death.

  
  
This was familiar. He'd said yes then. And had still come to Karachi.   
  
She studies him for a long moment, then sighs. The anger that she'd wrapped around herself like armour appears to have dissipated, and she is once again cool and poised, though there is a brittle, porcelain quality to that poise.   
  
"You're in no shape to be going anywhere alone."  
  
He'd get both of them killed.  
  
  
"Then you'd best chaperone me," he says. He steps past her and picks up the statue where it had landed on the ground, holding onto it as he goes back to the door.  
  
He doesn't stop to make certain she's following him.  
  
He should. He should look back. He should make certain. He doesn't.

  
  
She hangs back, long enough for him to have taken three long strides, long enough for her to have enough time to study him as he walks away. Long enough to see an answer. When she does move, it is without the silent, comfortable ease that had woven its way between them in the days before his disappearance, without even the playful antagonism of before both their deaths.   
  
Instead, there's a cool wariness and an uncomfortable, unspoken understanding, a glimpse of something behind the masks. Emotions uncertain and ugly and intense. As they approach the lift, Irene cannot help but calculate just how long his high will last, and whether or not she could still catch that plane when it did.  
  
  
He pushes the lift button to the garage, where the car is waiting. He taps his fingers on the metal bar in the lift, the energy from the cocaine keeping him buzzing, keeping him moving. Stimulated. He has to stay stimulated, otherwise he has to stop and by stopping he has to think.  
  
"You should've left after the first day," he says. "Why did you stay?"

  
  
She leans against the wall, a part of her keeping count of the staccato rhythm of his fingers against the lift. She will not tell him that her planned last stop before leaving had been to visit the morgue, just in case. Instead she shrugs, and her answer is carefully cool, precise.  
  
And half true.  
  
"It takes time to get new travel papers. Why did you come back if you had expected me to leave after the first day?"  
  
  
He won't tell her it was because part of him was hoping she'd still be here. He knows papers take time, and he'd hoped she might---wait. She isn't the sort that _waits_ , not unless she knows her goal is at the end of the line. The person who did wait was---  
  
The door to the lift dings open and Sherlock steps out, leading the way to a bright yellow corvette he's parked at an awkward angle in the parking garage. He pulls open the door and slips into the drivers' seat without so much as another word. The ignition has a long metal rod sticking out of it, which Sherlock fumbles with to get the car started again.  
  
  
Her lips twitch in a small, involuntary smile at the sight of the car, and even more so at the state of the ignition. But her tone remains cool, cautious, almost impersonal, as she slides into the passenger seat.   
  
"Going for subtle, I see."  
  
  
"I thought that was the idea," he says. "Throw them off the scent by being obvious."  
  
The car starts up and he puts it into first gear, giving it a quick, loud rev up. He nods to the leather passenger seat.  
  
"Ready?"

  
  
Her fingers tighten on the leather as he revs the engine, and it annoys her to have to force herself to relax her grip. She is still off-balance, the chemical remnants of the angry scene in the hall still lingering in her bloodstream, no matter how hard she tries to disguise it.   
  
"I wasn't aware that the idea was still being considered." But between that and the question he never answered, she has the clues to her answer, and there is a bittersweet vindication in the wordless confirmation that she has gotten as under his skin as he has hers.  
  
  
He starts the car in motion towards the exit, slowing as he reaches the single-lane exit out onto the street. As he stops, he pulls the parking brake, leans out the window, and throws the statue behind himself, watching as it hits the windshield of the car behind him, cracking it. The owner behind him stops and gets out, preparing to come forward and start a fight. Sherlock doesn't hesitate, he pulls the brake free and takes off, peeling outwards towards the highway.  
  
His driving is somewhat erratic, though not as fast as he'd prefer. He waits until he turns off onto a stretch of desert road away from the business of Las Vegas before he starts to fully climb in speed.


	6. This Bitter Pill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock Holmes' reappearance, and his re-acquaintance with cocaine, turns Irene Adler's escape plan on its head. But there is truth in the desert, and is that a truth that can change anything between them?

She curses at his stunt with the paperweight, and the grip she had just managed to pry herself out of returns in full force as the nimble car peels towards the road. Irene resists the urge reach over and wrench the makeshift key out of the ignition, along with the urge to throw him in the tiny trunk and leave him there until the buzz wears off.  
  
She knows the pattern well enough, knows that the adrenaline, the rising heart rate, will help. The only part of the equation she isn't certain of is the initial dosage, otherwise she would have been able to predict the eventual crash even better. But as the car pulls onto a stretch of desert rode and picks up speed, even she cannot deny the exhilaration, and her grip on the leather armrest relaxes, marginally.  
  
  
He waits until he can see her grip relax before he speaks.  
  
"Two cars back," he says. "It was the cab driver from before. Stop the car in front of him, stop him from following us."  
  
He wasn't certain when he took the lift upstairs if he'd seen the cab driver. Such an uncertainty only came with being overstimulated so that the world was buzzing in his ears and head and everywhere. He wasn't taking the risk of actually being wrong, and thus he grabbed the statue. Something to divert.

  
  
"Why stop him from following us if the point was to be obvious about where we were?" She keeps her face carefully pointed out the window, staring off into the middle distance. The car's engine is a low rumble, just at the edge of conscious notice.  
  
"Where do you think you heading?"   
  
For once, admitting she doesn't know. And that she's putting a certain trust in him by coming. But he is too unpredictable right now for her to guess, and she needs to know.  
  
He probably won't remember it later anyway.  
  
  
"Doesn't matter," he replies. It's a better reply than 'away', which was his first thought. He can't form coherent complements to answers, he can't see beyond the exact moment he's sitting in.  
  
It's late afternoon. He can see that, he can judge what time it is here and know what time it is back in London, in the city that John Watson and Mycroft Holmes and everyone else he knows is.  
  
He shakes his head, and the car swerves a little with the movement. "Doesn't matter."  
  
  
"I'd say it matters a great deal," she replies. Her voice is crisp, controlled but, despite that, she continues to keep her face turned away from him, staring off into the distance, into the wavering heat mirages that rose off the desert sand.   
  
She is willing the remnants of adrenaline to wash from her bloodstream, wanting back the comfortable control of before. "One unplanned death in the desert is more than enough for a lifetime for my tastes."  
  
  
"Do you really think I'd take you out here to your death?" he demands, and his voice sounds extremely insulted. There's no humor, no joking, just a sort of coarse seriousness.  
  
70\. 75. 85. This car climbs in speed just by relaxing into it. He switches into 6th gear.  
  
  
The car's acceleration climbs steadily, and Irene wonders which will give first: the engine, his will, or her nerve. "I think you're barely aware of what you're doing, much less able to commit murder," she retorts with false emotionless calm, "but subconscious accidents happen."  
  
She pauses to draw a breath, as if to continue, but thinks better of it and lapses back into silence.  
  
  
He lets out a snort of irritation. Barely aware of what he's doing. She has no idea what he's doing, she has no idea what he's _feeling_ \---not that he'd admit he felt anything. Gods don't feel, and Sherlock Holmes tries to be a god more often than he tries to be a man.  
  
Once the car hits 110, he turns the wheel sharply, and the whole car tailspins off of the road, kicking up sand as it skids to an awkward stop. His knuckles are white against the wheel. Subconscious accidents. He turns and looks at the Woman. The Woman.  
  
"Why?" he demands. "Why are you here? If you know I could kill you and you know it's dangerous, then you shouldn't have come here, you shouldn't be in the car here, with me. Why? Why would you put yourself in that sort of danger?"

  
  
She doesn't scream.  
  
Even as the car's speedometer tops 160 kph and he jerks the wheel, sending the low sports car skidding in a cloud of sand, even as her heart races and her fingernails mark the arm rest's leather with precise crescents, she doesn't scream. He provokes countless things from her: frustration, irritation, sentiment, anger, even momentary lapses in control, but she is determined that is one reaction he won't get.  
  
When the car comes to a halt, the sudden stillness almost unnatural after the speed, she forces herself to draw a slow, deep breath in the face of his demands. Her fingers unclench their bloodless grip from the seat, and despite the slow breath her blood sings with the new flood of adrenaline. There is no hope of keeping that calm, detached mask on with the chemical flood of new sudden fear and residual anger feeding off each other, and she has to wonder if that had been on purpose, if he had done it to keep her as chemically off balance as he has made himself.  
  
As the sand settles, Irene opens the passenger side door. She doesn't get out, not yet, but the door is open and desert heat rushes into the interior of the car. She is tempted to get out, to leave, no matter how absolutely impractical and idiotic it is to walk out of a car on a stretch of empty desert road.  
  
Her eyes are bright, and her pulse races as she turns towards him. Her voice is anything but calm when she answers, sharp with anger-honed cruelty and raw with poorly hidden fear and self-recrimination.   
  
"Why do you ask? So you can have an excuse to hide behind another high and pretend you're free of sentiment and _chemical defects_? You already know the answer, and it terrifies you enough that you'd disappear, to think that _there's someone who_ accepts _you in all of your differentness_."  
  
  
The laugh he lets out is unpleasantly disbelieving. "You don't know _anything_ about my _differentness_ , Woman."  
  
It's a lie. It's a lie and he hates himself for it. She's pulling herself deeper into him, like ink into a shirt cuff or blood into a fine carpet. She's becoming part of him and she's beginning to see what fibers are holding him together. In the haze of his high, he can almost see her melting into his fabric, and he turns sharply away from her.  
  
The heat of the outside feels good.  
  
"There used to be _someone_ who did." He pulls open the drivers side door and tries to step out before he realizes he's failed to unbuckle himself.  
  
  
She unbuckles herself first before she steps out into the desert. It's a petty gesture but she never said she wasn't petty. Petty and vindictive and a host of other things.  
  
One step, and grains of scorching sand begin working their way into the expensive, open-toed sandals she is wearing. They are utterly inappropriate for the desert, but then so is her entire ensemble. Battered armour and sharpened swords were far more suited to them both for the moment, but they had neither. Just words and laughter.  
  
Her laugh is sharp and ugly in its mockery. "Who, John Watson? Now who's letting sentiment colour their perceptions of the truth, Sherlock?"  
  
  
Just the name hurts. Sherlock stays in the drivers' seat, paralyzed by this and the inability to realize that the lapbelt is holding him in. He shakes it off, unfastens it, and gets out of the car.  
  
"Where are you going?" he demands. She is the first to leave, therefore she is the one being unreasonable. Sod the fact that he'd thought about exiting first.

  
  
There is nowhere _to_ go. She'll last a few hours before dehydration or overheating gets her, and in her shoes she wouldn't make it back to the city limits within that time. But to be in the passenger's seat is to be reminded of her lack of control, reminded of the way he has tangled himself into her very being.   
  
"Why do you keep _asking_?" she retorts. She doesn't go very far, simply to the back of the car to lean against the hood of the trunk. As if daring him to drive away. "Either stop asking or stop pretending you don't care, it's getting tiresome."  
  
  
It's not fair. He hasn't got much longer on this last hit of cocaine, and he never got the blissed-out feeling he was hoping for. He just felt busy, energized, _angry_. He got no sleep and even less done, apart from nearly getting himself killed on the way back up to the hotel room.  
  
His face didn't hurt yet. It would, but that would be later.  
  
"Because I've tried deducing your intentions, Woman, and I just don't know any longer! You're a survivor, you're better than _sentiment_!"  
  
Except she isn't, and neither is he. And she's right. She's right, he's _pretending_ , and she's giving him the ultimatum, she's telling him to stop pretending and he---he just---he can't---

  
  
She should feel triumphant. That she's wrung the truth in all its crystalline pain and confusion out of his drug-induced haze. After all, she's pleased every other time she gets him to admit _something_ , pleased as if every careful revelation is a point in a game, a turn in a dance.  
  
But this wasn't the game, this was truth drawn like blood from a wound, visceral and ugly and far too much proof of their mutual humanity, when he was too fond of pretending to be something cold and remote and she too pleased to be the Goddess to some kneeling supplicant. This was revealing their mutual weakness with nothing to hide behind, with nothing but raw wounds and anger pounding in her ears.  
  
The silence stretches, heavy and oppressive despite the expansive clear sky above and the stretches of desert around them. There is nothing here but the two of them, damaged and delusional, and still the words that normal people, _other_ people, would use never come.  
  
For a moment Irene is simply tired, feeling wilted under the relentless desert sun. And some of that tiredness creeps into her voice, amid everything else. She leans heavily against the rear bumper, and stares out into the rising heat mirage. "Because being Irene Adler is infinitely more interesting than being the opera diva or the Southern belle or the idiotic woman with too much casino earnings and not enough sense," she answers.   
  
There's enough truth in that to make her feel distinctly exposed, vulnerable. But she is keenly aware of the balance between them, of give-and-take, of a score to be held in tension. And she'd tipped it too far by demanding the admission he'd given.  
  
  
He doesn't understand. He feels like he should, but she's---she's never _not_ Irene Adler, the Woman. He went undercover once for almost two months and he never felt like deep down he _wasn't_ Sherlock Holmes. Can that happen? Can one feel like they have completely lost themselves?  
  
He swallows. He moves towards her. The high is fading. He hates that it's fading. He hates that he's not able to pull himself together fast enough.  
  
"I don't understand," he finds himself admitting.  
  
  
She neither moves towards nor away from him as he nears, simply remains exactly where she is, watching the horizon waver beyond the curtain of heat rising from the ground. The maelstrom of fear and anger and weariness in her voice, in her mind, leeches out of her face, as if she simply cannot sustain so many expressions at once. She looks blank, her eyes faraway, as she considers his words, as she rolls them around in her mind, as if testing the truth of them, the sincerity of them.  
  
She had not been aware of it herself, of how adrift she has been since her 'death', how much of her own perceptions, her own memories of herself are tied up in the dominatrix. Before Montenegro, she had been content to don personas like clothes, to discard them whenever a country or town became too irritable or the law enforcement too interested. She had been content to pretend, to wear the masks, but it had taken Sherlock Holmes and his relentless deductions despite the disguise, his unrepentant _differentness_ to remind her that there was something else out there, someone as different and as damaged and as utterly _extraordinary_ as herself. To remind her of what it meant to have _purpose_ , whether it was as simple as to misbehave or as elaborate as to dismantle global criminal networks.  
  
That even if she lived and breathed the disguises she donned, she was never utterly comfortable in them, that they were flawed self-portraits that hid her from even herself.  
  
"No, I don't suppose you would. You will always be the consulting detective."  
  
She doesn't elaborate. It is a truth far too intimate, far too uncomfortable, far too newly discovered, to voice.  
  
  
"Yes, don't you see?" he says. " _That_ is what I mean. Always, no matter the disguise. It's not the hair color or even the location that's what is intriguing about you. Your _mind_ , though---"  
  
He reaches out to touch her hair, and thinks better of it. Perhaps the distance is a bit farther than he anticipated, perhaps the sensory stimulation of her hair would be too much for the state his mind is in. Whatever the reason, he pulls his hand back.  
  
"It leaves a mark all its own. And that will _never_ belong to anyone else."  
  
  
A drop of moisture slides down the back of her neck, reminding her of the heavy damp weight of her hair, and Irene tugs at the single lacquered stick holding the coil in place. The rich red mass falls around her shoulders, clinging wetly to itself, but the dry desert air is already leeching moisture out of it.   
  
His words, not the abortive motion of his hand, makes her turn to him. Her attention had already been on him, of course, but she finally turns to face him. She studies him intently, her eyes all but boring into him as if she can read the thought behind the words, the things unsaid between the sounds.  
  
She cannot read him completely, not as completely as she reads the rest of the world, but it is the mystery and the silence and the spaces between that they have tangled themselves in. It is nowhere near enough to rebuild herself on, nor would she do it on someone else's words rather than her own. But it is a touchstone, a reminder.  
  
And the knowledge of it makes her smile, the gesture touched with unexpected vulnerability and genuine pleasure.   
  
"Sometimes I think I envy your clarity, Mr. Holmes."  
  
  
Sherlock did not want to have this conversation. He did not like that he was unable to get the upper hand. He did not like that he had to confront emotions----even just seeing them frustrates him. He likes mysteries. He likes having something to fall into. To stay into. Hide into.  
  
But he did not want to hurt the Woman, either. Not like this.  
  
She smiles at him, and there's something especially _different_ by her smile. Something vulnerable. He does not stop himself this time, he reaches out to touch the edge of her mouth with trembling fingers.  
  
"Clarity?"

 

 

She could have turned away. Could have flinched or moved or any number of things to keep the touch from connecting. But she doesn't, not initially, and his fingers are warm against the side of her mouth.   
  
"Are you sure you want to ask that question?" she says. She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and stares back out into the road behind them. "The answer may just send you straight back into that chemical escape you've been trying to find for two days."  
  
It's a dodge as well as a question. She isn't certain he wants to know, and she _is_ certain she doesn't want to answer.  
  
  
"You are the one who referred it as something I possess," he replies. "Considering I'm fairly aware of the things I have on my person, I'd like to know what precisely you mean."  
  
His lip is starting to hurt, and he can feel his eye every time he blinks. Injuries. Things to add to his present inventory.  
  
All the same, he half wants to pull the Woman towards him and kiss her. It's a strange desire and completely unwarranted. However, she is _here_ , and he desires her to remain so. He desires her. He doubts he will ever stop desiring her. This is something he possesses, too. That desire. Like the clarity she claims he has, he has no idea where the desire came from or why he continues to have it.

  
  
"I've claimed a _lot_ of things about you, and this may be the first time you've ever wanted clarification. Well, asked for it," she says. A touch of wry humour creeps into her smile, and Irene shakes her head.   
  
A strand of still damp red hair falls into her field of vision and she reaches up to push it back, her hand brushing his. "And if it is all the same, I'd rather not have the last two days happen again."  
  
She's dodging still. And she is well aware he's realized it by now. But in that refusal there's an admission too, that she has actual feelings and opinions on the days of his disappearance, that it is in fact something she'd rather avoid.  
  
  
The last two days. The last two days are a blur to Sherlock. He hasn't slept, he's eaten nothing, and only consumed enough water to keep from passing out from thirst. He's fairly certain he's consumed alcohol, so his kcal intake is high enough to suffice. John would be proud.  
  
He doesn't understand again. His defenses are low enough that he doesn't bother pretending that he does, he simply looks at her, open and confused. "Why would where I was matter to you?"  
  
Sentiment. Love is a dangerous disadvantage. He blinks and looks away from her as it slowly clicks into place. He does not love the Woman, he thinks. He desires her presence, whether he wants to or not, but it is not the same as _love_ , the sort of love that John Watson writes poetry to his girlfriends about and Molly Hooper imagines from the movies she watches. He remembers aching profoundly at the thought of the Woman no longer being in the world, but he felt nothing when she was not around him for months and months at a time and he heard nothing in texts from her. Even now, even as he's angry and aching and coming down from a high, he does not love her---but he does not like knowing she was hurt during the days he was gone.  
  
"I had to---" he attempts to explain, but fails.   
  
  
She is brought up short by the open question, open and free of their usual power play, and for a long moment she just stares at him, as if by waiting she can will this sudden vulnerability away.   
  
"Find a fix, I can see that," she completes for him. This time there's no anger in her words, no cruelty or the need to draw blood. The desert heat is too oppressive for much more anger, and she is too keenly aware of where the balance of power lies at the moment, the disadvantages she sees and does not want to exploit. The joy of the game was in their matched wits, not in his confusion and her experience.   
  
"Sudden disruption to well-laid plans with known assassins in the area," she continues, turning her attention away from him again. "What conclusions would you have drawn?"  
  
  
"Dead or kidnapped," he replies without hesitation. It has never been a question what she believed happened---simply why it mattered. Sentiment. Sentiment. The word repeats itself over and over in his head. He tells himself he would have felt nothing if the Woman had done the same, but he feels as though he would've. He would've done everything to find out what had happened, where she was. If she was dead, then he would have moved on. If she was not----well, he would not have left her.  
  
Sentiment. Or simply poor judgment.  
  
"I'm not---it has nothing to do with addiction," he says.  
  
  
She nods at his conclusion and is momentarily grateful that he doesn't press. She feels like he would have, normally, pressed for the why once the obvious conclusion was given. But the jab at his addiction had turned his thoughts.  
  
"Doesn't it?" she asks. "It's a simple answer. Concise." She gives him a sidelong glance. "Free of sentiment."  
  
  
"But it isn't true," he says. "Sometimes the easiest answer isn't the right one. When one sees hoof prints, one thinks horses and not zebras, but if one looks harder and sees fur or examines where the horses were---"  
  
When one looks at Sherlock Holmes, the man with old track scars on his arms and a sudden re-acquaintance with cocaine, one thinks addiction. But to look deeper---  
  
"Never mind," he says. "Forget that. Forget all of it."

  
  
Irene thinks she can almost see the moment he realizes what he's insisting, the moment when his own desire for truth butts up against the fast crumbling walls of their individual delusions and defenses. She smiles again and the moment of vulnerability fades back to knowing arch amusement.  
  
This she knows. This is more like them. At this point in the game she would press the advantage. The moment he realizes he's slipped, she'd needle him again. But this time she doesn't. This time she is the one who offers the lie, who offers to ignore the slip, because to press it as an advantage is to expose far too much of her own weakness.  
  
She simply leans back on her palms against the trunk of the car, taking note of how quickly the desert heat has heated the surface. The gesture allows her to brush up against him, quick and wordless.  
  
"I thought so."  
  
Not that she isn't above a moment of smug satisfaction.  
  
  
His lip twitches into a partial smile at her smugness. Occasionally, she deserves it. His hand is trembling. He's coming down. He doesn't want to be. He has more to take, and he thinks about how to get around that.  
  
"We need to go somewhere."

  
  
She looks pointedly around them, at the pale, fine sand of the Nevada desert, the tire tracks, the stolen yellow Corvette, the wavering mirage of Las Vegas in the distance.   
  
"Isn't that precisely the thing that led to this scenario in the first place?"  
  
  
"Is it?" he asks, blinking at the desert, and then back at the Woman. It is. He remembers instantly, and feels immediately idiotic for it all. He wants to pretend he doesn't know why he's there, or pretend he's completely forgotten, but he can't.  
  
"I had to get away," he says.

  
  
"I remember that conversation."  
  
Her hair is dry now, at least dry enough that moisture will not seep its way down her neck, and Irene gathers it up again, carefully twisting the newly dyed length into a knot. "I was wondering whether 'away' was going to end in California or a nuclear missile range."  
  
  
He lets out a snort, and then heads back to the drivers' seat. From how his hands are shaking, driving isn't the best idea, but it's going to be dark soon and the last thing they need is to be caught out here in the dark.  
  
He couldn't possibly shoot straight right now.

  
  
She remains leaning against the rear bumper, reinserting the lacquered hair stick with care to keep the twist of hair firmly off the back of her neck. Even as he moves towards the driver's seat, she doesn't budge, instead watching the road behind them.  
  
There is very little motion there, no one coming out into the desert at this time of day, though there are glints of reflected sunlight off windshields and polished car hoods entering Las Vegas.  
  
"Is it chivalry or stubbornness that's keeping you from asking me to drive?" she asks without turning to face him.  
  
  
He turns his head to face her, but keeps his hands on the wheel.  
  
"Do you want to drive?" he demands. He meant to ask, but he's feeling raw. He's feeling. It's annoying.

  
  
She meets his eye through the rear windshield and raises an eyebrow. It's hard not to miss the way his hands rest on the wheel, as if the physical grip can keep her from noticing the trembling.  
  
Irene considers her answer for a moment. She knows how to drive, learned enough to satisfy herself that if it ever became necessary she could. But she's always preferred a driver, and she doesn't even _remember_ the last time she's had need to drive.  
  
But his hands are trembling and she can still feel the force with which he had made the car spin out. Any lack of practice on her part has got to be better than his spectacular lack of control at the moment.   
  
"I thought you'd never ask," she drawls, finally pulling herself away from the back hood and making her way to the driver's side.  
  
  
He gives her a look, and then glances at the manual stick in the center console. Well, if she says she can, then he's going to have to believe that she can. He gets out of the driver's seat and walks past her to the passenger's side. It's for the best that he's in the passenger's seat. He's starting to feel nauseated anyway. It could be coming down from the cocaine. it could be dehydration. It could also be supreme irritation. Always difficult to tell.  
  
Without a word, he gets in, pushing the seat back to accommodate his legs and waits, drumming his fingertips on his knees.


	7. What Holds Us Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the reason for Sherlock Holmes' reacquaintance with cocaine is revealed, he realizes there is a decision to be made between a London past that has left him behind and a future still uncertain. The question is, is it a future in a different London, or one with the Woman?

She notices the manual transmission the moment before she slides into the seat and curses mentally. How had she not noticed _that_ earlier? Possibly because she had been too busy trying to ignore the volatile tension, trying to pretend to be calm.  
  
But too late. She reviews what she knows driving standard, hiding the hesitation behind the need to readjust the seat from where he'd had it pushed back. Clutch. Brake. Accelerator.  
  
She quickly commits the gear diagram to memory and rests her foot on the clutch. A glance over at him, then at the thin metal rod jammed into the ignition, and she fiddles with it until the engine revs.  
  
"I wasn't aware learning to steal cars was part of chemistry. Or forensics," she says as she shifts into first.  
  
  
"To understand how something is stolen, one needs to know how to steal it," Sherlock says. He looks over to the Woman and feels a minor smirk hit his lips.  
  
"You need to restart. I let it stall."  
  
  
She glares at him for that, and returns the car to neutral. Another few moments of fiddling and she gets the car restarted, shifting into first and easing off the clutch.  
  
"Difference between knowledge and practice," she counters. She isn't certain when is the exact moment to start tapping the accelerator, so she guesses. And is rewarded by the car jerking forward. "Unless you're admitting to murder _before_ becoming a detective."  
  
  
The car jerks forward, and Sherlock remains fairly neutral rather than showing any sort of actual worry. The likelihood that he'll die comes more from their assassins or his drug use rather than the Woman's driving.  
  
"I admit to nothing," he says. "Though I imagine you learned what people like before doing what it was you did."

  
  
Her brow furrows as she considers the car again and Irene manages to smooth out the acceleration (some), though she doesn't attempt to tempt fate by throwing the car into reverse, instead taking a wide turn. The wheels spin in a few places, throwing up fine sand before gaining traction again.  
  
But she isn't going to let herself be thwarted by a bloody _car_.  
  
"I never said I learned. What they like is always there, it's just knowing where to look."  
  
  
"Observing," he says, with a nod. "It's so infrequent that people do. John---"  
  
No. He shakes his head. John almost started learning. There were posts on the blog about trying again, trying to follow cases that Lestrade consulted him on. John was starting to _get_ it. And then it all changed.  
  
He goes silent and stays that way.  
  
  
She gives him a sidelong glance as he lapses into brooding silence, though that sends the car drifting ever so slightly left and into the oncoming traffic lane. A quick adjustment, and she manages to get back on the road.  
  
Once on the road again, Irene attempts to shift to second gear and fails. Twice. And though she attempts to keep her mounting irritation to herself, when the car stalls a third time, she mutters something dire under her breath in what sounds like Basque.  
  
  
"You have to ease up on the clutch," he explains, sounding for all the world like a fussy husband whose wife doesn't know how to drive. That image comes into his mind, and he finds himself immediately disgusted by it. He and the Woman could never be simple husband and wife. It was beyond them. Or, perhaps, they were beyond _it_.  
  
"And move into second gear faster, first is really just to start the car moving."  
  
  
It would always be the contradictions that kept them orbiting each other the way they do, Irene thinks. The ease with which they fell into such utterly ordinary patterns. The minds that were anything but ordinary, that made everything, every lighthearted teasing word, every laugh, every argument, something part of a much greater game of chess, a much more intricate dance than anything that could be explained by simple chemistry.  
  
The rest of the world would point to their liaison in the coat room and their angry words in the hotel hallway and call them lovers. The rest of the world would never realize it was hours of murmured speculation about the people in the opera house that caught their attention, that led to heated connectivity in the opera house, that it was the desire to be desperately aloof and failing that led to cutting words under a desert sun.  
  
But then that was why the rest of the world might dismiss them as tempestuous lovers, and why they were simply the consulting detective and the woman.  
  
"Or you could have just stolen an automatic," she points out, sounding distinctly annoyed as she restarts the engine again, this time easing up on the clutch as she shifts from first to second.  
  
  
He shrugs. "What for? I hadn't expected you to drive."  
  
The desert moves past them as she shifts gears, and he lets his mind wander for a moment. The feel of the car moving, the way the Woman smells, the way the air conditioning from the car feels against his skin. It's all very real. Sometimes, he feels like this holiday, this strange holiday they're taking together, isn't real at all.  
  
"He's getting married," he says. The reality of the words hurts as they come out of his mouth. The reason for the binge, the reason he ran. The reason things won't ever be the same.  
  
  
She is finally getting the hang of it, enough that she's reaching to try shifting into third when he speaks again.  
  
Ah. That explained a _lot_.  
  
She doesn't look at him. She suspects if she does, he'd take it as sympathy, or pity. So she simply comments, as if she's talking about nothing more than the weather, or the gathering of clouds on the horizon.  
  
"People do that sometimes. They get divorced too."  
  
  
"Yes, they do," he agrees, though his voice is flat. John is not the sort to get married unless he intends to stay that way. It is impossible for John to have simply frozen in time in the exact place he was when Sherlock last saw him---but he's imagined that. He's imagined John there, unmoving, unchanging. It's immature, it's childish. It's still how he's survived. And now it's changed.  
  
"She's dreadfully boring, from his blog's description. I imagine she'll remain around for a while."

  
  
She's starting to recognize the feel of the car beneath her feet, and it's enough to let her try shifting into third, so she does. She's fairly certain what she's doing is ruining the transmission, but the car's already stolen.  
  
"Something tells me you say that _all_ of his girlfriends are dreadfully boring. And I expect you'd be surprised how long she will stay around if circumstances change."  
  
It doesn't take someone of her skills to see what ties Sherlock Holmes and John Watson together. It just takes someone of her skills to have the confidence to bring it up.  
  
  
"Circumstances won't," he says.  
  
He sounds certain, but he just feels defeated. She's right, though. John wouldn't---he wouldn't choose a woman over him. Would he?  
  
"You need to pull over," he says.

  
  
"I'm pretty certain death is only permanent for one person in this car."  
  
At the non-request, she does glance back over at him, the motion making the car drift again. She sighs, and obligatorily slows the car to a stop, remembering at the last minute to throw it back into neutral.  
  
  
Death is only permanent for the Woman. He wonders how much he'd have to destroy in order to make her safe. Could he do that? Could he bring her back to life? Would she want _him_ to be the one that did it? She may not have her name, but she has her pride.  
  
The car shudders, as if it's about to stall, but the Woman slips it into neutral in time. He pulls open the door and throws himself out of the car, retching into the dust. Coming down on an empty stomach. He's forgotten how bad it can be. He usually had John to care for him and chastise him for a binge. And they were never this bad.  
  
  
She winces at the sound of his retching, but simply sits and wait for the fit to pass, turning away to stare off into the distance. She isn't one to offer comfort, to chastise and _care_ in such a mundane way. It isn't like her, and though she can feign it for a disguise, it never quite rings true.  
  
"I won't ask you to dinner then."  
  
  
He drops back into the passenger seat. The bile taste in his mouth is sour.  
  
"It was never about food for you," he says. "You haven't the faintest idea how long it took me to recognize that."  
  
  
The confession makes her look over at him, and it is so utterly incongruous to everything that has happened in the last few hours that Irene cannot help but laugh. And it is neither malicious nor cruel, simply almost... open.  
  
"Now you've made me curious about just how long it took."  
  
  
Sherlock lets out a little _hmph_ of a response, but the laughter from the Woman does allow a small, genuine smile to flit across his face.  
  
He could stay like this, he thinks. He could stay with her. Kill Moriarty's men, but remain. She's his challenge, his muse, in many ways. They compliment each other.  
  
But it would mean giving up on everything back in London. Forever. Is it fair to give her up for everyone else?

  
  
She is unaware of the bent his thoughts have taken, though she'd be surprised if she had known. She knows this, this liaison, this partnership, is something too unstable to hold. Or maybe she is, deep down, deluding herself and not _wanting_ it to hold, to have an escape.  
  
But it is a thought she doesn't have. For the moment she's simply relishing the momentary ebb in ugly tension, and starts the car again. "Before or after Karachi?"  
  
  
"Before," he admits. Karachi was when he realized that he understood it, that he realized he didn't want her dead, that the pain he felt, the loss, was from her death. He couldn't fathom a world without the Woman in it.  
  
It was in that moment he realized she truly had beaten him. He _won_ , and he was still there to stop her from dying. He forced himself to lose. To give in.  
  
He wonders if she realizes that. It's for the best if she doesn't. He's already given too much up around her. Made himself vulnerable.  
  
"There's a small motel ten miles south," he says. "We should stop there."

  
  
She knew, of course, that in the end she had won. That he had been on her side exactly when she had needed him to be. But she would never tell him that she hadn't expected him to be there. That she had, initially, believed his cold goodbye.  
  
After all, letting her heart rule her head had lost her everything once. And she wasn't looking to repeat the experience.  
  
"I suppose the hotel is out of the question," she agrees. "Though I do wonder exactly what the maid made of the broken mirror."  
  
  
"Hopefully she took a piece of it to use as a weapon against her husband," he replies. "From the placement of her covered-up bruises, she's finally ready to fight back."  
  
He lolls his head away from the window and back towards the Woman. She's changed, too. Everything changes. She's not the same Woman who straddled him in her downtown flat, and she's not the same Woman he saved in Karachi. No, she's changed, and not just the way her hair now glows red in the setting sun.  
  
"Who else wants you dead?" he asks.

  
  
A faint smile at that. Her money was on the maid. The woman might have even taken what was left in the hotel room, sold it, and gotten enough money to make a break for it even if she _didn't_ take the broken glass.  
  
She's getting more used to the car, and she doesn't speak for a long moment, simply driving. "As far as I know, just whoever took those photographs in Montenegro. Everyone else thinks I'm dead."  
  
  
He almost asks her who would if she were to want to come back. But it isn't right to suddenly ask that. Not when he is simply flummoxed by John's new pre-marital status. It would be unfair to want her back in his life, when he has one, now. Should this desire persist after he is sober, then that is another matter.  
  
"If only we could work out _how_ they know we're alive," he says. "And whether or not that information is for sale."

  
  
She wonders briefly if the mystery photographers had been following either of them before Montenegro. Pride makes Irene think not, that she surely would have noticed. But a part of her is willing to acknowledge that perhaps they hadn't been _certain_ until Montenegro. After all, the American diva's persona had not slipped until that night in Kotor.  
  
"All information is for sale," she answers, "the question is how much." A sigh, and Irene switches lanes to avoid some debris in the road. "The casino's net worth could have helped with that."  
  
A surprising lack of recrimination there, perhaps.  
  
  
"The money will still be there," Sherlock says, sounding bored. Of course, he doubts it's about the money for the Woman. She likes the power, she likes the challenge. She also prefers Burberry and Prada, but that's hardly her fault. Luxury brands are Sherlock's preference as well, and a life on the run makes that difficult.  
  
"Why Australia?" he demands. Lots of questions today, lots of things in his mind that are only partially answered.

  
  
Irene shrugs, seemingly unfazed by his constant questioning, by the changes in topic. "Because I was looking for a change in climate," she answers blithely. Hardly the truth, but she isn't going to tell him because Australia is far away from Montenegro, because it'll give her plenty of time, plenty of space to hide again.  
  
But she can't resist returning his question with one of her own. "Why does it matter why Australia?"

  
  
"I was just making conversation."  
  
This is a lie. It is not about making conversation. It is not about filling the silence, it's about filling gaps in knowledge. He doesn't understand why she would go _there_. Why would she---  
  
No. It shouldn't matter.  
  
He'll work it out later.

  
  
"Because there's an opera house in Sydney."  
  
This too is a lie, and she doesn't care that he knows it. They spin comfortable fictions for themselves, of being aloof and unmoved by sentiment, of not caring whether they are dead to the world. But it is all a lie and it is why they are here. To connect with the one person in the world who might have a chance to understand.  
  
And still they'll spin the lies as the miles roll past and they head steadily south. There was something in that.  
  
  
"Obviously not," he says. "A contact there?"  
  
No, no, there's something else. Something he's missing.

  
  
"If I said yes now, would you really believe it?"  
  
She had very few contacts left in the world, after all, and even fewer that she would trust with the knowledge that she was still alive. Individuals who could get the documents she needed, who could help her go to ground, those were easy to find, easy to exploit, but she had been scrupulous in never letting them know exactly who they were dealing with.  
  
  
"No," he admits. "Probably not."  
  
He leans his head back and looks over at her. She's still here. She didn't drive away when he started retching.  
  
"You will always be Irene Adler," he says.


	8. Clarity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Truth can be found in the strangest of places, perhaps none so strange than the lips of one Sherlock Holmes, recently relapsed addict. But the question remains, what will Irene Adler do with the truth she's discovered? And does it change anything between the Woman and the Consulting Detective?

She can feel him watching her, but Irene pointedly keeps her eyes on the road. To look at him now would be giving in, losing. Losing what, she isn't quite certain. Pride, perhaps.  
  
"Irene Adler is dead," she reminds him. "We made quite certain of that."  
  
  
"And yet, here you are," he says. "More than a name."  
  
His voice goes quiet, and he swallows. His mouth tastes sour from the bile, and he realizes he's very thirsty. It's all---it's all so _base_. The body is transport, it can survive without needs for a very long time if he works at it. He knows this. It's all transport.  
  
"I'm tired."  
  
  
More than a name. More than just the dominatrix who brought a nation to its knees.   
  
But still just Irene Adler.  
  
She laughs softly, because there is nothing to say to that observation, nothing that would not reveal her own doubts and sentiment. A sign for the motel he'd mentioned earlier appears and she nods towards it.   
  
"And dehydrated, I'd imagine."  
  
  
"Yes," he says. Very. He looks in her direction, eyebrows knitted together.  
  
"You never questioned that it's a binge," he says. "Never questioned the signs, only the cause. You've dealt with this before. You're concerned but not panicked, so we have someone who was hurt but not dead."

  
  
She glances over at him at his guess, the laugh turning into a suppressed twitch of a smile. He asks now, rather than a lifetime ago when she'd pulled a syringe out of her vanity and dosed him. The idea of a dominatrix with drugs in her boudoir doesn't surprise him, but Irene Adler knowing the signs of a cocaine binge makes him press for answers.  
  
"Or I experimented in college," she retorts, her voice a mimicry of American college co-eds everywhere. "Very _very_ thoroughly."  
  
A part of her wonders if he'd believe it. She spun him contradictory possibilities as a matter of course, so she suspects he will take it as such. Which made this particular half-truth all the more appealing.  
  
  
"I imagine that," he says. "Though I doubt with drugs. You seem the sort to be far more subtle with your practices."  
  
Not that he imagines she didn't attempt some things with drug usage---he certainly did when in university. Never with sexuality, that was far too _boring_ for him. He had no interest.

  
  
Irene laughs again, and pulls the car off the freeway and towards the motel. "Now you're just trying to flatter."  
  
She deliberately does not confirm or deny his guess, she prefers very much to remain the frustrating, confounding mystery to Sherlock Holmes. And while stories about her university career and the experimentation there and the short-lived ambitions of a law degree were hardly damning, given what he _did_ know, it still all seems far too ordinary for what she had eventually become.  
  
  
He lets out a half-laugh. The Woman would always be a mystery, and part of him preferred her that way. She would never fall off of the pedestal he put her onto. She never could.  
  
"Make sure you press down on the clutch before you stop."

  
  
She risks taking her eyes off the sparsely occupied parking lot she's pulled into to glare at him. There is, of course, no way to park without following his reminder. But she knows of no better way to park without doing exactly that.  
  
So she does, with superficial ill humour. "And here I thought I should just park by colliding with the proprietor's car."  
  
  
"You could do that," he says. "But the likelihood that we'll get a room without being noticed for stealing a car is very, very slim."  
  
He shuts his eyes for a moment, and then snaps them back open. He has the oddest desire to be comforted, and that is absolutely idiotic. He ignores it and pulls out his cigarettes. It's an American brand, something revoltingly menthol, but miraculously not low-tar.  
  
  
The relative sparsity of the parking lot means she manages to park without either incident or much more cursing in Basque. As the car's engine slips into silence, she turns her attention to the man in the passenger seat again. There is something here. Something she should say, something she should do, but she isn't the type to comfort or to be particularly kind in the face of loss.  
  
Her kindness runs towards rare offers of convenient lies to hide behind, and she does not have words now. So instead she gets out of the car and heads for the front office. "I'll get a room."  
  
  
"I'll wait."  
  
He knows he looks strung-out. A woman as beautiful as she is, the proprietor is likely to think inappropriate things of her if she arrives with a man as strung-out as he's been. While she's been a sex worker before, he doesn't want----for some reason it bothers him that the proprietor might think that _now_.  
  
Is this like what John Watson felt whenever people mistakenly thought that he and Sherlock were a couple?

  
  
It doesn't take long.  
  
The proprietor is too entranced by some reality show playing on the television to look at Irene, much less the stolen car parked in the lot. And after all, they were scant miles outside of Las Vegas, the proprietor had seen far odder than a Burberry wearing woman and an unkempt man strung out on God only knew what and a flashy car.  
  
There is, at least, an old vending machine in the front office, and when Irene returns to the car with the keys, she's also holding two bottles of water, condensation already dripping down their sides, and a small package of over-the-counter painkillers. All three of which she drops into Sherlock's lap through the window of the car.  
  
"Last room in the row. It's the only one with windows in more than one wall."  
  
  
"Giving us more of an advantage in case we were followed," Sherlock notes with a small nod. He takes the water and a sip from it. He doesn't trust his stomach with the painkillers yet. He doesn't actually properly trust it with the water, either.  
  
He holds onto the water and painkillers and gets himself out of the car. His legs feel odd. Weak. He shakes his head and follows.  
  
"I should've selected a more subdued car," he admits. It will be the closest he imagines he will get to admitting he was wrong.

  
  
The small purse remains on Irene's arm, full of stolen jewelry, cash, and travel documents. She'll need to find another idiot with too much money to take advantage of soon, but they'll be in the area at least another night and she expects she'll be able to find someone fitting that particular description once exhaustion has finally caught up with Sherlock.  
  
She can sell the jewelry, but Irene dismisses the idea immediately. That would require a fence, and the underground of Las Vegas had already proven that it knew of their existence, and there were at least two people looking for them. While simpler, it was too risky.  
  
His admission shakes her out of her thoughts, and Irene realizes she's outpaced him across the parking lot. She slows her steps, and shrugs with a ghost of a smile, "You're rarely that subdued."  
  
  
"I saw no reason in it," he says. "After all, I hardly expected I'd make it back to the hotel in my state."  
  
It was then, of course, that he'd remember that the Woman would be there, and that his actions would turn on her. It was then that he left the vehicle running, so that the assassin that had clearly followed him would not follow up, would not corner the Woman and Sherlock while neither were prepared.  
  
He did not save her life in Karachi in order to have her die here, he tells himself. It is a simple enough tale, and there's enough truth in it to make it more palatable.  
  
The vulnerability he feels right now is downright embarrassing, and he attempts to straighten himself as they near the door.


	9. Definitions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teetering on the edge of exhaustion, Sherlock Holmes asks a question, and Irene Adler is left with the uncomfortable knowledge that it is a question she may not be able to answer.

  
The motel is old, rarely frequented, and its door still opens with a metal key rather than a magnetic or punch card. It takes a bit of manhandling to get the doorknob to turn, attesting to just how infrequently used the lock was.   
  
The interior is nothing like the expensive hotel room in Las Vegas they'd left behind. A double bed sits in the middle of the room topped with a rough comforter, its inoffensive pattern faded. A black cube of a television sits mounted to the wall at the corner across from the bed. The only other piece of furniture is a wooden chair, its padding threadbare, springs no doubt rusted, and behind a half-closed door, minimal facilities with toilet, sink, and shower, all crammed into a space barely big enough for two of the three.  
  
"That does beg the question of what you _had_ expected to do." The 'in your state' is unspoken, but it hangs in the air between them anyway.  
  
  
It's difficult to say he doesn't know. Not feel, perhaps? Maybe part of him wanted to stop playing the part of a dead Sherlock Holmes and just finish the job. After all, the life he had before was gone. It was all a very self-pitying thought, and he immediately decided such an action was unsuited for him and therefore not part of what he was looking for at all.  
  
He drops backwards onto the bed, and it groans loudly.  
  
"Define 'recreational scolding'," he says, impressively off-topic.

  
  
She raises an eyebrow at the completely obvious subject switch and turns to lock the door. Deadbolt and chain. It would do little more than slow anyone down, if they insisted on coming through the door rather than the more vulnerable windows, but she shakes that particular bit of paranoia off as much as she can.  
  
Too obvious. Too much of a fuss. Too likely to attract attention.  
  
"Why? You don't expect me to believe you didn't do your own research."  
  
  
He lets out a sigh, as though she is being obvious again.  
  
"I want _you_ to define it for me," he says. "I sincerely doubt whoever poorly writes that website of yours could possibly work out what it means in your mind."  
  
  
"Why do you _want_ to know what it means in my mind?" she retorts, dropping into the straight-backed chair, the only other piece of furniture in the sparse room, with a wince. Definitely rusted springs.  
  
She leans back in the chair, the gesture allowing her easy sight to both windows _and_ to watch him out of the corner of her eye. "It hardly matters at this junction."  
  
  
It hardly matters is correct. None of it really matters. It's why he takes the drugs, why he needs the diversion. It's all so _stagnant_. And John Watson, getting married. Getting _boring_ as he gets married and begins reproducing half-boring children in a world that's so slow and dull.  
  
He turns his head so he can see her from where he lays on the bed.  
  
"Scold me."  
  
  
It is hard to say whether that was a request or a demand. Irene wonders briefly if _he_ knows. She suspects not.  
  
The two words hang in the air between them as she turns her head to meet his eye, to study him sprawled and strung out on the cheap motel bed. She _could_ , it would be easy, but he isn't a client. And she recognizes it, the demand for scolding, for pain, a substitute for the drugs.  
  
She shakes her head. "Not even if you begged."  
  
  
He considers begging for a moment. The reaction she might give could be extremely interesting. At the same time, he doubts it would change her mind.  
  
"Why?"  
  
He just wants something solid to hold onto. Something tangible like pain or cocaine, that can give his life meaning with the sudden realization that it won't, soon. It hardly matters.  
  
He stands and pulls off his coat, then his shoes, and begins unbuttoning his trousers as he heads to the bathroom.

  
  
She keeps an eye on the windows. The sun is making its ponderous way nearer the horizon, and she suspects the tenants will trickle into the motel parking lot soon enough. Truckers, cross-country drivers, people who don't want the distraction and glitz of Las Vegas, who have other places to be. But for the moment it is still quiet, the parking lot empty of people.  
  
It is easier to answer, when he is out of her field of vision.  
  
"Because it isn't what you like. You like knowing there will still be a mystery out there to solve and you want to solve all the ones that come your way. They like being denied what they think they want and they want the pain that comes with it. You just want it to hurt because the drugs aren't working."  
  
  
He's glad she can't see him, can't see the amount of surprise on his face at her words. She's right, of course. She reads what people like the way he reads their previous twenty-four hours on their hair and clothes. He leaves his trousers unbuttoned and pulls off his shirt. His arms are raw, and his body is pale, skin tight and dehydrated. He splashes water on his face and scrubs the taste of bile from his mouth.  
  
Stepping back out into the motel room, it's like he's seeing some sort of strange amalgamations of two very different worlds. There's the world of this dingy, crusty motel, and there's the Woman, her hair glistening red in the dying daylight and her body regal and unnaturally perfect against everything. It invokes emotion under Sherlock's skin, though he can't properly decide what it is.  
  
"There aren't enough mysteries. Not even here."

  
  
She's mildly surprised he responds. She'd thought the answer would flummox him and he would ignore it, changing the subject again, like he has been doing all afternoon. She keeps her attention on the window for another few seconds, making sure the car that was driving by actually does and does not turn into the motel parking lot. She isn't certain why, but it seems important.  
  
Only then does she turn her attention back into the cheap motel room and the man she's sharing it with. "Mysteries you can't solve or ones you can?"  
  
  
"All mysteries can be solved," he says. "It just takes time and observation."  
  
He loves cold cases for this reason. They're all pressing until they're solved.  
  
Except her. He keeps thinking if he works harder at it, he may solve her. But he doesn't want to, at the same time. Sentiment, perhaps.  
  
"I can do it," he says, again as a non sequitur.  
  
  
"And more than enough people to create more even when you do," she says, rising from the uncomfortable chair. She doesn't bother pointing out that the only thing there are more of in Las Vegas than cold cases are marriages. It is a city of vice and corruption and misbehavior.   
  
Irene peers out the window again, then shuts the blinds, both sets, before heading for the door. "Sleep. You're exhausted."  
  
  
"Irene," he says, voice quiet and intense. "I _can_ do it."  
  
  
The quiet intensity in his voice makes her stop and turn, and for a long moment she simply looks at him, studying him, trying to figure out what he means. She isn't certain whether this is just the last remnants of his binge or something else, something she's missed or something she'll curse herself for not seeing once the pieces have fallen into place.  
  
Her hand reaches for the doorknob behind her, and her voice is soft. "Of that I have very little doubt, Mr. Holmes. The question is whether you should."  
  
  
He nods. He doesn't know if she's worked out what he has, but if she has, then the implications are clear.  
  
"That," he says. "Is entirely up to you."  
  
And with that, he turns to leave for the shower.


	10. Conversational Landmines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson's impending wedding forces Sherlock Holmes to re-evaluate what his resurrection would mean, and while Sherlock comes to a conclusion, Irene Adler finds herself dancing away from one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the lateness of this chapter's posting, as travel makes a mess of things like "sleep" and "timezones". We should be back to our regular one-chapter-per-week schedule as of next week.

She's momentarily glad that he's turned away, as it means she doesn't have to school her expression away from perplexity at his answer. She _had_ missed something, had assumed it was the last of the drugs talking and now she'll have to figure it out, whatever it was.  
  
But she'll have time to think. The car is still outside and it should be gotten rid of, exchanged for something more subdued. She pockets the hotel room key and undoes the locks.  
  
She'll be back in a few hours. The purse with her new identification in it, along with the jewelry from Montenegro, remains on the ground next to the chair she'd been sitting in.  
  
  
Sherlock watches her go. He steps over to the small, dingy washroom and looks at himself in the mirror. He's a mess, truly. The dark circles under his eyes, the split on his lip, the black eye forming, and the track marks along his arm.  
  
He looks back to the door. When he read the blog entry about John's marriage, he believed he had nothing to go back for. Completely nothing. But now---now if he went back to London, he had something to do. Something he knew he _could_ do once he got back. He could bring Irene Adler back to life.  
  
For some reason, he believes she deserves that.  
  
He cleans up. Takes a shower. Uses the complimentary razors, shampoo, and toothbrush to clean himself up. Rifles through the purse the Woman has left behind, acquiring her concealer, which he delicately applies to his face and lip He washes out the stains on his dress shirt and trousers, leaving them hanging by the small window air conditioning unit to dry out while he sits on the bed in his silk boxer shorts, thinking.  
  
The papers and jewelry are laid out in front of him on the bed. There would be no point in attempting to hide the fact that he's been through her things.

  
  
It is near midnight when she returns, the sun having set and the desert having gained a distinct bite in the air. She pulls into the parking lot in a black BMW convertible, luxurious but not flashy, positively subdued compared to the bright yellow Corvette.  
  
There were three things going for it: it started with a key, the original owner was guaranteed never to report it stolen or lost given the humiliating circumstances under which he lost it, and it was an automatic. The motel parking lot is now fuller than it had been when she'd left, though still not terribly full, and Irene parks the newly acquired car at the other end of the lot from the room on the end.  
  
She pulls a small duffel out of the passenger seat and returns to the room, turning the key slowly and deliberately to ensure neither she nor the room's occupant would be surprised.  
  
The motel room is bright after the crystalline darkness of the desert highway, and Irene blinks momentarily in the doorway before she enters, shutting the door behind her. Three seconds of looking around, and she tosses the duffel bag onto the bed, disrupting his arrangement of the contents of her purse.  
  
"Should have taken it with me, I see."  
  
  
"What for?" Sherlock says, rebuttoning the cuffs of his shirt as he steps back into the room. He could be a different man for how he's cleaned up, if not for the tell-tale makeup covering injuries and exhaustion. He has purpose, now.  
  
"I've already deduced the contents. I was simply saving you the time of working out whether or not I knew."

  
  
A look of brief irritation crosses her face. "I would have known you'd looked just by the makeup."  
  
It wasn't the contents of the purse itself that she didn't want him knowing. The makeup, the jewelry, all of that she knew he could deduce from a dozen little clues. It was the origin of the passport, the name that irritated her that he now knew. Irene Norton, of Barcelona.  
  
She'd never used her own name on a false document since her death, neither first nor last, but this time she had. It would have been a clue, had she made it to Sydney and he had not been dead. The manipulative Spanish wife of the diplomat.  
  
She tells herself that the trail would have gone very cold in Sydney, but there had been no point to it, the passport was now simply an almost embarrassing display of sentiment.  
  
Instead, she tosses him the key to the car. No signs of struggle, of the key having been wrenched from a body or forced through the narrow slot of a valet cabinet. It had been freely offered, even, from a mortified middle-aged man who played too much golf and enjoyed being pegged by his wife.  
  
It had been the last that he had blurted out hurriedly in the church's confessional without bothering to see if the figure on the other side of the confessional had been the priest. And upon realizing his mistake had, after some persuasion, handed over the keys meekly.  
  
"You left a bit of concealer on your collar, by the way."  
  
  
He'd noticed the name, though it didn't strike him at first the significance. He at first thought it was simple speed and a need to escape that made her put such an uncommon name as her given on the passport. But no, the Woman did not make mistakes like that, not even when in a rush. There was a purpose, and even now sentiment was one of seven distinct possibilities as to it.  
  
"And you, a bit of holy water on your sleeve," he says, catching the keys. "Slight staining from the copper basin on the left sleeve, that means you stood on the confessional side of the booth. Overheard something, then? Used what you knew to finagle the car from the man---or woman, though man is statistically more likely considering the brand of car."  
  
He pauses, holding the keys awkwardly in his hand.  
  
"I-I am sorry," he says, the words practiced, including the stutter.  
  
  
A second glance at her sleeve, at the almost imperceptible spot and the faint ring of copper deposited by the evaporated water, and Irene arches an eyebrow in acknowledgment. She would have contradicted him, pointed out that it could as easily have been the wife borrowing the husband's car as a man, but the unexpected apology cuts her off.  
  
A silent beat, then she brushes past him and on her way to the bathroom. "You shouldn't say something you'll regret you can't take back, Sherlock."  
  
  
"Why would I want to take back an apology?" he asks. "Isn't that what you want?"

  
  
She gives him a sharp look in the mirror as she begins running water in the sink. "Are you apologizing because it's what you think I want?"  
  
  
"Yes, of course I am," he says, sounding extremely put-out. "I wouldn't apologize if I thought that _wasn't_ what you wanted."

  
  
She isn't sure whether to laugh or be irritated at the obvious response. Perhaps both. So instead of showing either, she reaches back behind her and pushes the bathroom door close. It doesn't shut completely, but it makes the point, as far as she's concerned.  
  
It also gives her an opportunity to pull up the skirt of her dress and examine the hastily bandaged cut that ran a few inches along her leg, just below her hip.  
  
"Why does it matter what I want?"  
  
  
The reply is automatic. "It doesn't," he says from outside of the door. Were this John Watson evading him, he'd have pushed the door open. But this is the Woman, and that just---well, he does know when being a gentleman is appropriate.  
  
"I recognize my behavior was inappropriate and regret the concern you clearly felt for me," he says, sounding cold but feeling sincere. "I simply felt---"  
  
He cringes at the word _felt_. He cringes because it's a word he doesn't like to admit. Feelings. Sentiment. Idiocy, all of it.  
  
"When you told me that you wanted to be Irene Adler again, I understood."

  
  
The bandage goes into the bin, and Irene dabs water into the wound to clear it out. Clean edges, shallow, it _had_ bled an astonishing amount before she'd bandaged it, which had been why she'd been in the confessional in the first place.  
  
The priest had shown a surprising amount of backbone to the threat of being blackmailed though.  
  
She pauses at his words, and there is a moment of indecision as she tries to figure out exactly what can be said, what _should_ be said without betraying even more of herself, without reverting them to the blistering rows of the afternoon.  
  
Irene straightens, lets the dress fall back to its proper length, and shuts off the water. The towel, with only the faintest trace of blood, gets tossed into the shower stall to dry. She answers before she opens the door.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
  
Right, this is good. She is saying 'thank you', so he's fairly certain he's said something correctly. The 'thank you's with John Watson always came after he'd apologized sufficiently. He hears her voice close to the door and takes a step backwards.  
  
He waits.  
  
Wants to say something. Doesn't.

  
  
She doesn't meet his eye when she comes out of the bathroom, and ignores the way her dress clings damply to her leg. Irene makes her way to bed and sits, careful not to brush the injury against the rough bedspread.  
  
"Just for future reference, that wasn't for apologizing," she says, opening up the duffel bag. Inside were a substantial amount of cash, a change of men's clothes, and a glazed porcelain figure of the Virgin Mary.  
  
She laughs at the sight of the statue.

  
  
"It wasn't?"  
  
His eyes travel to her leg, and he glances back at the bath, where a towel lays. Injury, leg. Non-lethal, but she's working very hard to not show it in her stride, so it must hurt. Cut, then. How did he get the slip of a knife to her leg, then? His mind begins to whirl, and attempt to work out exactly what had happened.  
  
He lets that simmer in the back of his mind while he glances at the contents of the bag.  
  
"His bag, but the contents of his pockets?" he theorizes.  
  
  
She smirks at that but does not answer the question about his apology. Instead, she draws her knees carefully to her chest and turns her attention to him. "The car and the bag. Two separate men," she corrects. There's a priest's collar in the duffel with the set of clothes, but she has not noticed that yet.  
  
"Well, one man overburdened by guilt and a diocese with something to hide. Nearly the same."  
  
  
Sherlock smirks. "Ex-boxer priest, by the look of it, though he's the one who cut you. From the angle of the injury and the height of the priest, obvious from the traces of mud on the bag."  
  
He enjoys showing off. It makes him feel like Sherlock Holmes again.  
  
  
She glances down at said injury. No blood, just residual water from the sink. A faint smile of approval threatens at the corner of her mouth. "Problems with self-control and anger," she agrees, "obvious from the injury. Not terribly pious. So the statue isn't his."  
  
Irene suspected _that_ had been from the diocesan bishop, who was so beatific Irene had wondered if the real scandal at the church wasn't drug use.  
  
  
"Piety is as useless a descriptor as 'innocence'," Sherlock says. He looks her up and down. A few hours away, and she's already misbehaving. She can never _not_ be the Woman.  
  
"Though how he aimed at your thigh---that is a mystery to me."  
  
Not too much of a mystery. In his mind's eye, he sees a variety of fighting scenarios where she might've been injured. At this point in their life, how would he feel if the cut had been deeper, if she had not returned?  
  
He is unable to work that out in his mind. Thoughts go back to the cocaine, though. Of vanishing into that.  
  
  
"Useless maybe, but terribly important in certain circumstances," she points out. The cash is enough for the moment, for another few weeks, unless they had to make too many unexpected escapes.  
  
She ignores the fact that she has defaulted to 'they' in her calculations.  
  
Another shrug, and she draws the dress back over the injury before picking up the statue and examining it. Cheap, painted by someone who painted for a living and not an art. Still, she supposed the bland expression on the Virgin's face might be considered beatific and calming by some.  
  
"Not a mystery for long, I'd wager. Or are you using your imagination?"  
  
  
"I thought you preferred it when I did?"  
  
His tone could be defined as 'flirtatious', almost. It's partially forced, of course. His body is still very worn out from the hours before, but he's not about to let that stop him, now.  
  
  
The pleasure of _misbehaving_ , of the power plays and manipulation, is slowly ebbing, and the entire day's (really the past three days) stresses are starting to gnaw at the edge of her consciousness. Still, she laughs quietly, tossing the statue back into the duffel bag and turning her attention back fully to him.  
  
"Was I implying I disapproved?"  
  
  
He steps towards her and reaches out his hand, taking a small lock of her red hair between his fingertips. Such a simple gesture could mean a lot of things to ordinary people, but to Sherlock such intimacy is almost unheard of. He simply---the acknowledgment that she is still there is extremely important to him in this moment.  
  
"You had every right to leave me here alone," he says. "Fascination with my imagination or no."  
  
  
And such simple intimacy is the sort of thing Irene avoids, because it _is_ intimacy rather than sensuality, emotional rather than sexual. The latter is easy, the former hurts, and she much prefers being in control of any pain that could and would occur.  
  
Still, she has a hard time breaking away from the touch, from turning her head and letting the lock of her hair, so foreign even to _her_ with its new hue, fall from his fingers.  
  
She tries not to focus on the tiny gesture connecting them, instead turning her gaze steadily back to his face. "Was that what you'd expected?"  
  
  
"Yes," he replies, because lying would be insulting her intelligence. "But not until I saw you left your new passport."  
  
He is a failure at intimacy, and as her hair falls away from his fingertips, he is completely at a loss as to what to do with his hands. Pull them away? Move them to her face? Throw up a v-sign? He wishes he could ask John. But John is getting married and---and that is not something he wants to think about.  
  
He leaves his hand there, suspended awkwardly near her face.  
  
"I would have looked for you."  
  
  
For a long, silent moment, there is genuine surprise on her face at his words, a moment of unfeigned vulnerability, reminiscent of the moment she'd stood exposed as he figured out the password to her cameraphone.  
  
 _This is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head._  
  
But the moment passes, and the walls rise again, the look of cool amusement that served as her armor back in place. Still, her voice is quiet, almost sardonic, when she speaks.  
  
"And you would have found me. Defeats the purpose of leaving if I'd wanted to."

  
  
Her vulnerability is plain on her face, and he remembers just how solidly his own walls were when he confronted her so long ago in Mycroft's office. He refused to be vulnerable as he tore her to pieces. And now, he has his walls up again. He was vulnerable before, in the car. He can't be that way, not now.  
  
"High praise. Or perhaps you wouldn't really be trying," he says. He looks back at her purse, and thinks of the 'Irene' on the passport.  
  
  
Her gaze follows his to the documents and the jewelry still scattered across the bedspread, and Irene shrugs, straightening and rising from the bed. The motion brings her even closer to him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough to touch.  
  
She reaches over and gathers the contents of her purse back into it, the amethyst ring and the diamond necklace winking in the harsh motel room lighting.  
  
"You never did sleep, did you?"  
  
She can change the subject as abruptly as he can.

  
  
"I'm not tired," he replies. It's not a lie. Mentally, his mind is awake and alert. Physically, his body is at the point of shutting down from exhaustion. When it shuts down, it shuts down. For now, he is far more interested in the Woman in front of him, in the closeness of her, and the way she moves around the conversation like prey might cleverly avoid landing in a trap. He wonders if the Woman sees the conversation as quite so dangerous.  
  
"Let's have dinner."


	11. Desperate Connectivity (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After three days running the emotional gamut, both Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes find themselves too exhausted to pretend.

Every conversation between them is dangerous. Every exchange of words a move in the game and a chance to slip. But that was what was so interesting, what was so utterly fascinating about them. Because conversation with anyone else is not a game, nor is it dangerous. Conversation with any other person in the world is boring, because the game is won before a single word is spoken.  
  
But he steers the conversation to something familiar, and after his admission in the car, Irene recognizes just how much more dangerous the familiar is, in this case. She doesn't move away, because to move away would be to concede, to lose, but to stay this close is dangerous, untenable.  
  
"What if I'm not hungry?"  
  
  
A slight smile tugs at his lips. Irene Adler would never be dead, not so long as the Woman stood before him. She was the only one of her kind who could dance around him, who could pull at him with just a look and a few choice syllables.  
  
He would not have followed her because she was all that remained in his life. He would have followed her because she was the Woman, and he followed her Twitter and her phone and any scent of her life before he jumped off of that building and into the life of the dead. It's---it's not obsession, it's not infatuation, and it's certainly not love. Whatever it is, it is wildly distracting him from his plans.  
  
And right now, he doesn't mind so much. It's a terrible thing, something he’ll need to chastise himself about later.  
  
"That would be---good."  
  
  
It does absolutely no good to ignore his proximity, she couldn't even if she'd tried. But proximity had never been the danger, never been the thrill. The physical added a new element, of course, but even that had never been only what she meant about dinner.  
  
She smiles, and her voice is low, intimate, and still somehow amused despite it. "And what, exactly, do you mean by dinner, Mr. Holmes?"  
  
  
He reaches out and puts his hand on hers, the way she did when she took it back in Baker Street so long ago. He's tempted to see her pulse, to know what it means, to coldly interpret her feelings. It would be far easier than being the initiator, than being the one to create the experience. Perhaps that is why people would pay her to scold them, pay her to initiate. It was far less work than doing it themselves.  
  
"What did you mean by dinner?" he asks. "Twenty-seven messages asking me to it. You can't have been hungry."  
  
  
The memory of Baker Street comes easily at the touch of his hand on hers, and a part of Irene's mind keeps track of exactly where his hand rests, a reminder of how she should shift if his fingertips brush over her wrist. She could turn away, to keep him from seeing the way her pupils dilated, but that too would be losing.  
  
So she merely steps into the little space left between them, and her free hand reaches up to brush at the inexpertly applied concealer dabbed on to hide his split lip. "I thought you had figured it out, before Karachi."  
  
  
"For the most part."  
  
Her finger on his lip brings to mind the fresh wound there, but her touch doesn't make him recoil. In fact, the intimacy of it is _good_. He imagines his own eyes are dilated, the way hers are. His pulse is elevated. Chemistry is so simple with them. And yet there is nothing simple about the process that gets them here.  
  
His other hand goes to her waist, to touch and to spread out his fingertips at her hip. To touch while not breaking eye contact.  
  
  
Even through the cloth, she can feel the outline of his hand against her waist, warm and deliberate. The tension is building again, as it had in Montenegro, but this time it is different, sparked not by fascination and slow-burning intellectual flirtation. This is more deliberate, perhaps more intimate, and Irene knows she shouldn't allow herself to be caught in it.  
  
But emotionally there has been too much in the last twenty-four hours, and she is simply too raw and tired of the adrenaline to pick another fight. And a part of her, a very small, very often ignored and denied part, cannot help but wonder how this will go, what unexpected trail through undiscovered country this will lead to.  
  
Her fingertips trace the line of his jaw, and the thumb of her other hand runs lightly along his knuckles, the sensitive skin picking up every peak and valley, every faint scar and bit of smooth skin.  
  
"Do we pretend nothing happened in the morning, or just refuse to talk about it?" An odd question to ask, perhaps, when her voice was already low and throaty, but she is offering him a choice.

  
  
He's partially focused on the way she touches his knuckles, on the feeling of her soft skin against him. He wants---he longs for---it's all _base_ and physical and it's worse than the drugs, because he can function without the drugs but he knows pain without the Woman. It's---  
  
Her question throws him. He genuinely does not understand it, and his eyebrows knit together.  
  
"I don't understand," he says. "Both of those are negative options, you can't want either of them."  
  
  
His confusion shouldn't surprise her, but somehow it does, and she smiles a little. She doesn't step away, and the pad of her thumb continues running over the back of his hand.  
  
"Physical. Messy. Hardly your usual standards of entertainment. I'm curious how you'll justify it." She doesn't point out that refusing to talk about it would in fact not be a justification at all. But then, nor does she answer the implicit question of what she wants.

  
  
Entertainment. She makes it as though this is part of a game. Part of _the_ game, the game they play with each other. It is, he supposes, as they are always looking to divert each other. But it isn't, as well.  
  
"I won't," he says, simply. "It will be an anomaly, a blip in the circuitry of an overtaxed and unemotional mind. You have always been the exception to the rule, Woman. But you already know that; you've taken advantage of it before." There is no malice in his voice as he says this. It might even be admiration.  
  
  
Entertainment is safe. It is a lie that keeps this, this moment of deliberate touch and near vulnerability, familiar, that keeps it from being something else, something simple and complex in an utterly different way.  
  
The hand that had traced the curve of his jaw settles lightly against his collarbone, and Irene laughs softly, quietly. "The truth suits you better than trying to figure out what I want."  
  
  
"The truth is something neither of us thrives in," he replies. But yet, it is the truth of why she stayed that's brought him here, the deduction of truth behind her false name on the passport, the admission of truth as to why he had fallen so low over the last three days...it was these things that brought him here, so close to her.  
  
He makes the first move. With an air of innocence that he supposes does not belong to him since that night in the coat room, he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to her mouth. Truth in it, honesty. Vulnerability. He does not think he likes the vulnerability much and may keep that locked up in the future. It suits at the moment.  
  
  
She enjoys watching him make the first move, as much as she enjoys poking moments of truth, of sentiment from beneath the emotionless shell. Because that part _is_ part of the game, is irrefutable proof of the humanity he tries to hide.  
  
And it is precisely the fact that neither of them thrives in truth, in their own humanity, that make the moments all the rarer, all the more memorable. His lips are warm against hers, a touch rough from dehydration, perhaps, but undoubtedly real. And she responds with neither smoldering heat nor simmering passion, but with slow exploration, with a care that is more often expressed in the hand wielding the whip but no less deliberation.  
  
The hand at his collar moves slightly, just far enough for her fingers to brush against his throat, against the pulse point beating just underneath the skin.

  
  
His pulse is elevated, and he knows she can feel that with her fingertips. He turns his hand slightly in hers so his fingertips can touch her pulse as well. Truth and yet a sense of mistrust. They never change.  
  
And yet they do. He feels her explore his mouth with her own, and he gently opens his mouth, deepening the kiss carefully. It is nothing like the coat room, all intensity and desire. Now it is emotion and still desire, but a different sort of desire.  
  
  
They are far too much themselves to trust completely, but all it takes is a moment of confirmation, to feel his pulse race beneath her fingertips as certainly as hers is at her wrist. Once she knows, once she's proven to _him_ that she knows, Irene's hand slides away from his throat and down his front, the light touch of fingertips alternating with the kiss of fingernails until his buttoned shirt gets in the way and she is running her hand over cloth covered muscle.  
  
She returns the kiss with the same care, at the same time deepening it, almost as if demonstrating, teaching. Irene can taste the bitter bite of nicotine, never really hidden by the mint of the toothpaste he has used to clean himself up. The faint taste of watered down wine no doubt still lingers on her own tongue.

  
  
His mind lists off the brands of wine that could taste that way, and decides that the church clearly wasn't at their best when they made that purchase, watered down or no. Her lipstick tastes waxy and feminine, and she's---she's so very _Woman_. There was the fast, impassioned time before, but now he moves slowly as his thumb makes circles on her wrist. Carefully. Memorizing the speed of her pulse and the way she feels as he touches her.  
  
Nothing is, strictly, different. They are both still dead to the world, apart from to a few assassins. They are both still them, still part of the world but not, and they are both as flawed as they were back in Montenegro. And yet---yet something _feels_ changed to him. Something new. Something almost but not quite _shared_ through this.

  
  
Her fingers run over wrinkles in his shirtfront, spots still damp from an attempt to clean up the worst of three days wear, ornamental stitching on the seams dictated by some designer student somewhere in a studio. She knows, better than most, that the body beneath is similar to most others, that there is fundamentally nothing unusual or distinctive about sex. That its physicality and emotionality are things to be manipulated and used to her advantage. That this should be no different.  
  
But it had been different in the opera house, and this is different still, halfway across the world. This is intimacy and exploration and, at least for the moment, there is nothing she is working towards, no manipulation that she is playing for. It feels like a truce, almost.  
  
She pulls away just far enough to break the kiss, to draw breath. Her fingers linger, slim and pale against the fourth button of his shirt. Her eyes had closed at some point and she opens them again to look at him.  
  
"Tell me what you want."  
  
It is a question as much as it is a command.

  
  
The answer feels utterly obvious. _You._ He wants her, because she understands him, because she is like him, but different, and because she is still here despite everything. He wants to dissect and understand her mind and at the same time he wants it to be completely foreign and a mystery because that is part of what is so utterly fascinating about it.  
  
"Lay down. Let me explore."  
  
  
Her lips quirk into a smile. She wonders if he realizes the enormity of what he's asking. It is in her nature, in her profession, to be unattainable. That she had already given in with the kiss and its slow exploration.  
  
Her fingers trace the button of his shirt and up against what is exposed of his collarbone. She takes a small step back, the back of her legs brushing up against the bed, drawing him that small step back with her.  
  
"Let's see how long you can explore before you get too distracted."

  
  
Considering the Woman, Sherlock imagines he could spend a very, very long time exploring her. Her body is mostly memorized in his mind, but there's more than just the way she looks, or even the way she felt during that initial coupling. He may not know exactly what he's wanting, but he rarely does when it comes to this arena. This is the Woman's territory, and he'll follow and learn as much as he can.  
  
"I've memorized the room. There's very little that can distract me."  
  
He moves with her when she draws him closer to the bed, and he leans down to breathe in the scent of her hair, to gently touch his lips to her jaw.  
  
  
Her smile becomes a low laugh that doesn't so much fades as burrows beneath the skin. His response is almost innocent despite its arrogance, and she is already thinking of the many many ways she can distract him. No doubt he'd expect games and messages tapped into skin, but she plans to do better, to play against skin and nerves with touch and stimulation.  
  
It's the game and yet not, the same and subtly different. Just like them, just like everything since he'd asked her for change for the cigarette machine in Kotor.  
  
Irene's fingers linger along his collarbone, her own throat arching into the tentative touch of his lips against her jaw, before she draws her fingernails along the collar of his shirt, until her hand is at the back of his neck, his hair brushing against her fingers as she draws him to a seat with her.  
  
  
He moves with her, but he doesn't want to sit _next_ to her, to lose the position he has to observe her. He half-kneels in front of her, watching her carefully, tracking her pulse. He moves his hand from her hip upwards, where he casually pulls a pin from her hair, watching as a red curl falls from its careful positioning. The pin he traces along her jaw where he'd just touched with his lips, and then along her collar, up to the back of her neck, mirroring her movements to him.  
  
He moves that pin to the side and reaches up to pull out another. This one he traces along her forehead, to the delicate arch of her eyebrow. He sets that one aside as well. One by one, he removes the pins from her hair. Her disguise, the way she holds herself together, falling away.  
  
Even if it's just this once, he wants to see her without any disguise.  
  
  
It takes five pins before the carefully pinned mass falls of its own weight, tumbling down her back. She dislikes it, the feel of it loose against the back of her neck, it is distinctly uncontrolled and vulnerable to her mind, as is the featherlight but distinct touch of the hairpins against her skin. Instead she tries to focus on watching him, in seeing the focus with which he is unpinning her.  
  
She leans forward, pressing a kiss to his jaw, and her lips trace its own featherlight touch along his jaw and down his throat. Against his skin, she cannot help but murmur, "So this is how the world ends."  
  
  
For all Sherlock knows, right now it absolutely could be ending and he'd be completely oblivious. He was focusing on the change in the muscular control of her neck when the hair falls down, the way she moves forward, the feel of her lips against his newly shaven skin. The way she might taste---  
  
Sherlock considers himself one of the most observant people on the planet. If the world _were_ ending, he would know about it. It's not so much not knowing, he corrects himself, it's about not _caring_ if this was how the world ended.  
  
"Were you expecting hellfire and judgment?" he murmurs as he leans forward to kiss her earlobe and inhale the scent of her hair. Some chemicals from the dye cling to her scent, but not many. New fragrances, the dust of a chapel, the car exhaust of a Vegas highway, they also call to him her in action.  
  
  
She can feel his breath against her skin, and it is almost enough to make her shiver. He is warm against her lips, and she sucks lightly at the thin sensitive skin at his throat, drawing her teeth along nerves just below the surface.  
  
"Hellfire and judgment seemed more likely until a few minutes ago," she answers, her fingers twining into his hair.

  
  
He is unable to stop himself from taking in a sharp breath at the sensation of her teeth on his skin Inciting a reaction, pulling at nerves he normally ignores---that is the Woman, completely.  
  
He releases her hair and moves his hand up to hers, gently gripping her wrist to pull her hands away from his hair, down to the bed.  
  
"I don't want to be distracted," he says, a small smile on his lips.  
  
  
A pleased smile plays at her lips at his response, and she allows him to pull her hands away, for the moment. The game changes, shifting now to be played in touch as well as words and mind. But they are always the same.  
  
She nips at his earlobe, a sharper touch than his kiss against hers. "I thought you'd memorized the room."  
  
  
"Yes, and the room is far from the most distracting thing here," Sherlock says, returning her smile at the feel of her teeth against his earlobe. "Sometimes I wonder whose side you are on."  
  
This is, of course, an ultimately true statement. He often wonders whose side she is on, but reminds himself that she is most definitely on _her own_ side, and everyone else be damned. At least, he would've thought that, if not for the fact that it is in her best interest to leave and she is still here.  
  
But again, he's distracted by her.  
  
He traces his fingertip down her jaw, and along her jugular, noting every crease and every distinct mark left on her skin.  
  
"You played football when you were young."  
  
  
It's a statement so simple and obvious that she doesn't need to answer. That she will always be on her own side, whether that is as Irene Adler or Alissa Carrington or whatever alias she's decided on for the time being. That her own side included misbehavior and danger and unwise choices but that they were still ultimately for her own gain, in whatever way shape or form.  
  
At the observation, however, she draws away, breaking the contact of his fingertip along her skin. "Most children do," she points out, some of the warm amusement leeching out of her voice. "Does it matter why?"  
  
  
"Light scarring," he says, fingertip to her hairline, right under where her hair had curled over the tiny scar, lowered and old, just under the shade of her own skin. A little more makeup might cover it.  
  
He traces his finger along the line of her cartilage. Small hole, healed. Raised cartilage.  
  
"You've had other piercings here before, but let them heal...ten years ago, I'd say?"  
  
  
The touches at her hairline and along the outer curve of her ear are light, barely there, but they are reading far more into her past, into the girl, the young woman, who had become Irene Adler, and the knowledge makes her feel far too vulnerable, far too exposed. Irene reaches up and takes his wrist, pulling his hand away from where it lingered along the old raised scar tissue of a pair of impulsive piercings, as if to prevent him from finding some other hint of a youthful indiscretion.  
  
"I've also broken three toes and an ankle." A lie, it had only been two toes and the ankle, in separate incidents. "What do you expect that to tell you?"  
  
  
He doesn't understand the gesture at first, but the way she asks, the demand to know exactly what he could expect from this knowledge, that explains it. He's gone too far. It's her way of telling him to piss off.  
  
He traces his hand up along hers, letting his fingers rest on her knuckles. There are little scars there, and they're new. New. Somewhere in Karachi, from the age of how raised they are.  
  
"Broken right finger," he says. "Ring finger."  
  
She may be telling him to piss off. He can't. He wants to know more about her.


	12. Intimacy (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faced with a choice between knowledge and mystery, Irene Adler knows which one she prefers. But does Sherlock Holmes feel the same?

She could move. She could break the spell and the little bubble of intimacy and walk out the door of the little hotel room and into the night and leave him exactly as he admits he deserves.  
  
But she doesn't, and she does not like to think why she doesn't. Instead, she lets go of his wrist, balling her hand into a fist as if to hide her fingers, the scars and fingernails that had been bitten to the quick at university, now hidden behind lacquer and polish. She simply glares at him, saying absolutely nothing.

  
  
The glare is interesting. The glare means he's right, because she would be throwing it back at him if he wasn't.  
  
No one came to her aid in Karachi. Not even one person. She had many powerful allies, but in a time of need she was alone. And no family. None. He'd never thought to deduce her farther than the last few months. It was an unspoken boundary that he'd just crossed. He could backpedal now. He could focus on the mundane and let it go, and possibly save the evening's previous agenda of intimacy and sexuality.  
  
But that would mean giving up. He doesn't want to do that. he doesn't want to give in.  
  
He lifts her wrist to his lips and presses a gentle kiss there. He looks at the state of her nails, always perfectly manicured, and the ridges filed away.  
  
"Stressful time when you were in university," he says. "Politics? Maths?"  
  
  
Her pulse has slowed from just a few minutes earlier, and Irene tries to keep it there, steady and unaffected as his lips brush against the nerves near the surface at her wrist. She focuses on her irritation, though his guesses provoke a certain amount of amusement.  
  
The fact that he'd guess politics and maths was more telling of him than it was of her, of what he'd expect. The fact that he hadn't guessed literature or psychology, that he'd expected something cold and analytic, or obviously useful in her chosen profession.  
  
She doesn't bother breaking her wrist out of his grip again, but her free hand does rest on his shoulder, as if to either draw him closer or push him away.  
  
"Law, actually," she answers, because that part has always amused her, and she wonders if he'll even believe it.

  
  
"Mmmm," he says. "Useful. I toyed with that for a time, myself."  
  
He stays where her hand puts him, and looks at her face. He has never been empathic, never been able to read expressions unless they are exaggerated in their irritation, anger, or sorrow. Rarely, very rarely, he's been able to realize that something he's done is very not good.  
  
The Woman is difficult to read at the best of times. A puzzle for any mind to want to crack at. No wonder she'd want him to stop, to stay away from her past. Once a puzzle is cracked, it may not be as enjoyable the second time.  
  
"What do you want?" he asks.  
  
  
She'd realized early on that a career as a solicitor would have been far too dull, full of coworkers and colleagues too easy to manipulate, and too dully driven to be interesting. And it would have required far too straight-laced a personal life.  
  
So she'd used her knowledge to pursue a profession far more interesting, with far better results, and all of it while flirting with the edge of legality.  
  
The question, though, draws her thoughts away from the past, and to the present. To the man half-kneeling in front of her, who was trying to tease apart her past, who had already torn apart The Woman's facade to the sentiment. Who was still singularly the most interesting, most damaged person she's ever met, who was like her in ways she had not thought possible. Who was now asking a simple question.  
  
A simple question, with no simple answers. What did she want? To be mystery and frustration. To be the dominatrix again. To misbehave and dance through high society and the circles of the rich and powerful and leave behind a merry tangle of scandal and intrigue with a priceless secret in her pocket.  
  
To be alive. To remember that there is someone like her in the world. For him to stop unraveling a past that she prefers to keep in the past. To be the woman in Burberry and leather rather than the girl who played football and broke a toe in ballet class. To find something that isn't simply drifting through aliases and cities like a grey ghost. To misbehave, and on a scale better than simply liberating wealth from idiots with too much of it.  
  
"To be Irene Adler."  
  
Or perhaps the answer was really that simple. She smiles wryly at the thought.

  
  
His smile is small, but genuine. Their moments of genuine-ness have become more frequent, and he can't help but remember the picture of them embracing in the alleyway, and how _normal_ they looked. Ordinary lovers. Ordinary Sherlock.  
  
But her---even with small, telltale scars showing little sections of history, she's still such a blank page to him. He can read so little, and that is such a mystery to him. She wants to keep that and he---he blinks away the white letters that appear over places on her body, showing him her past.  
  
She remains a mystery.  
  
"As if you could be anyone but."  
  
  
A soft laugh. A finger run lightly along his collar, smudging the little dab of concealer that had collected against the shirt.  
  
"You asked."

  
  
He leans over her, brushing her mouth with his, very lightly.  
  
"Do you want to sleep?"  
  
  
The touch is light, barely there, and Irene catches herself nearly leaning into it. So he _was_ learning.  
  
She draws away just enough to look him in the eye. Her pupils are dilating again, no doubt. "I keep late nights."

  
  
"I've made you keep a few," he says.  
  
  
A smile tugs at her mouth, and she leans in again, her lips against his cheek, her breath warm against his ear. "Then what's one more?"

  
  
What indeed. With her eyes dark as they are, and having her warm and close, he can't help but agree wholeheartedly. What is one more night for them, when their holiday from being the dead and unremembered will only last so long?  
  
He kisses her again, this time with more confidence, more seriousness. He wants this, wants to explore her and learn more about her. He wants to deduce her past, unravel little pieces of her, but never fully know everything about her. Keep her a _pressing_ case, as she will never be solved completely.  
  
  
And she would rather indulge the physical and deflect the game to others, to the world around them and the people that populated it rather than let him unravel any more of her past. A part of her knows well that it is a position that cannot hold, that they cannot be so thoroughly themselves without looking for those slips in each other, that for every scar he deduces the origin of, she'll learn something like his consideration of law in university.  
  
But there was no reason to make it easy. No reason to draw out the process and this momentary holiday, since it would not last.  
  
She returns the kiss carefully, deliberately allowing him to initiate the contact, like the first steps of a dance. But that too will not last and they will try to lead each other as they always do. Her fingers run lightly along his collar and along the back of his neck, curling into his hair.

  
  
He lowers one of his hands, tracing it up her thigh, just under the hem of her skirt. He knows her legs, the smooth skin and the tight muscles underneath that suggest some sort of sport to tone. If he could press his hands into her, if he could pull out the wires that make her work and see exactly what cogs go into what gears and how she's put together---would that ruin her for him? Would she cease to be the mysterious Woman that haunts his dreams?  
  
Her dress has a back zip. He's not concerned about this yet, but he will be, later. Something to keep in the back of his mind as he breaks the kiss and traces his mouth along her jaw, throat. Tastes the world she just came inside from on her skin.  
  
  
His hand against her thigh is pleasant, but not distracting, and Irene tightens her hand into his hair, slim pale fingers tangled in dyed brown curls. Her other hand meets his at her thigh, sliding up his arm, feeling the shift of muscle and bone beneath fine cloth, fingernails tracing five parallel paths up his arm and along his shoulder.  
  
A part of her realizes this is different, that this and the growing moments of genuineness between them will be harder to unravel and harder to give up than the liaison in the opera house, though it would be even harder to give up the tense game of discernment and deduction that had preceded it. That perhaps it is all sides of the same coin, of finding a momentary harbour of recognition, of connection after drifting on a ghostly sea.  
  
But the feel of his mouth along her jaw, lingering at the sensitive skin of her throat, _is_ distracting, and the smooth, progressive path of her hand along his shoulder falters for a moment as she arches into the touch, her fingers tightening in his hair.  
  
  
He finds himself aroused by the newness of it all, the difference in it. How strange and unusual it is, even for them. They're not like this, he thinks. They're all teasing and seduction that comes with playing a game. This doesn't feel like playing anymore. It feels like the sort of intimacy, the sort of thing he only shares with John---though without the sexuality he feels with the Woman.  
  
Her fingers trace up his shoulder, and he can feel the pressure along bruises and sore muscle and that feels good, too. having her touch him like this, having her connect to him. If he can pull all the points that connect them, what sort of web would they weave?  
  
"I want you," he says, nipping at her skin.

  
  
 _I want you._  
  
She is used to being desired. Being wanted. Being pleaded for by clients who like the pain she inflicts, the humiliation she visits on them, the control she exerts. She draws it out of them, men and women alike, with whips and ropes and commands.  
  
But this is different, this is desire offered simply, with little more than touch to provoke it. And at the same time it is desire long in coming, provoked by mutual intelligence and death and drugs and a game of wills they both lost.  
  
And it is an admission, an offer, that lays her bare. Leaves her without the dominatrix to hide behind. He is far too good at it, at stripping her masks away and exposing her vulnerability in unexpected ways. And even as her fingernails dig into his neck in at the feel of his lips and teeth against her skin, she has no response.  
  
"I--"  
  
She only manages a pleased gasp in return, her hand falling away from his shoulder to rest against his at her thigh.  
  
  
He kisses down, mouthing her skin that shows above the dress. There's too much clothing. Too much in the way. He uses his free hand to reach up and fumble a bit for the zip of the dress. Not to remove it, not yet, but while his mind is still in control, to prepare ahead of time.  
  
Where her hand touches his at her thigh, he slowly raises it up, moving the skirt out of the way, exposing more of her to him.  
  
  
She tells herself it's the physical. That it is the touch of his mouth against her skin that makes her want to return the favour, makes her want to feel skin rather than cloth under her fingers. That it is action and reaction.  
  
She tells herself this and knows it is a lie. That it is the surprising intimacy that is drawing her deeper into his orbit, that it is the knowledge that she is simply The Woman to him that makes her want this.  
  
The hand at his neck reaches up into his hair to tug him up to her again, her kiss now subtly demanding where it had before been simply skilled and teasing, and the hand that had been resting against his at her thigh snakes into his trousers' belt loop, pulling him closer.

  
  
Emotion is not something he is good at. Like sexuality and intimacy, it is something he doesn't share with many and hasn't even thought of until recently. Expressing this, this desire, it's beyond sexual. It's aggravatingly deep, a connection that he can't quite see the beginning of. Are there people out there who feel connections like this are _normal_?  
  
Her kiss is demanding, and she pulls his body closer to her, his erection pressing against her thigh. It's more than just sex, though. Just as saving her was more than just stopping the story from ending. His name was the code to her heart and she---well, she is the Woman, the only woman who matters. She predominates the whole of her sex.  
  
  
She deepens the kiss, as if by doing so she can touch and taste and _know_ exactly what was going on inside his mind, as if it will tell her more than the fact that he's been careful to rinse all traces of his binge away, that the motel's toothpaste tasted of spearmint, and that he disliked low-tar cigarettes.  
  
He's worked his way under her skin, even without all this. This just reinforces it. Makes the fact so abundantly clear that even their willful ignorance cannot hide it. She smiles against his lips at the feel of him pressing against her thigh, and untangles her fingers from his belt loop to dance along his chest, undoing a button of his shirt here and there, just enough to let her slip a cool finger within for a light, teasing touch.

  
  
Her touch is cool, and it seems to leave his skin warm wherever she touches. She undoes him one button at a time, with intervals holding him together making the shirt he wears _seem_ as though it's still in place, though it would only take a few flicks of her fingers to undo him completely. The worst part is that he knows without a doubt that he could stop it all, that he could be the cold, calculated detective he wants to be, and all it would take is to pull away, to step back and step away from her. To go back to the casino, to do what he plans, to not stop. Never stop.  
  
He pulls back to look at her. The Woman. Dark eyes and loose hair and the way she pulls herself together even as he tries to pull her apart. For all that he wants to be that detective, she makes him want _this_. He wants this to be part of who Sherlock Holmes is. Is there a way to be both?  
  
He kisses her. There's a way to have both. There _is_ , he tells himself. He wants both, he will have both. The Woman and the Detective.  
  
  
His eyes are as dark as she expects hers are when he pulls away, and there is an intensity in his look that she does not fully understand, as if he is trying to solve some mystery, some enigma he's discovered. But there is no mention of childhood football accidents or healed piercings, and Irene decides that whatever he is deducing, whatever he has discovered, is inconsequential at the moment.  
  
The illusion of mystery.  
  
She's undone enough buttons on his shirt that her hand fits within, lets her draw light paths of fingernails and fingertips that trace along muscles and over nerves. When she speaks, her lips against his, her voice is low and breathless, "Changed your mind about exploring?"

  
  
"Not remotely," he says. "I've simply chosen a different area of you to explore."  
  
He moves down her body, but her dress is really in the way of the exploration he wants to do. He traces his mouth along the fabric of her chest, and down her stomach. She is muscular along her stomach, but she does not do aerobics. Natural musculature, and she is naturally athletically build. He tries to imagine what her young life was like, if he could deduce little things about her just from that.  
  
When he gets to her thigh, his mouth finds warm flesh and he tastes it, tastes her.  
  
  
He moves down her body and she nearly protests at the sudden lack of contact. But to protest would be losing, somehow, and even now she cannot abide giving him too much of an advantage. She leans back, ignoring the scratchy motel bed comforter, and arches into him, into the touch of warm breath and quick lips.  
  
"You may have better results with your new choice," she manages to answer, wry amusement turning to pleased surprise as his mouth finds bare skin at her thigh. Smoldering heat pools in the pit of her stomach at the feel of his lips and tongue against nerves suddenly sensitive, and her fingers curl in his hair, as if to hold him there.  
  
  
He moves the skirt away, pushing it up and moving his lips up her thigh. He traces along muscle under skin, thinking about what the strength in her legs means. It shows extended periods of time in high heels, and extensive running. She stands in heels, she runs in heels, but she rarely falls. Few scars.  
  
Her fingers in his hair, the way she holds him in place, it's _good_ , it feeds his arousal. He wants to see what she'll do next. He makes it up her thigh to her knickers and presses his mouth to the fabric he finds there.  
  
  
Her body moves without her explicit thought, muscles tensing as his hands push the skirt up and his mouth traces the same path. A sharp intake of breath as he presses his lips to thin silk. An expectant heartbeat, and it takes effort for her to keep her hips still, to keep from arching into that touch.  
  
No doubt he could deduce that, in the tension of the body beneath his hands. She opens her eyes, not remembering when she'd closed them to focus on touch, and the sight of him between her legs turns the smoldering heat coiled in the pit of her stomach to sparks of desire that dance up her spine.  
  
Her voice is mostly steady, though no doubt he can hear the wavers that she _can't_ control, the slips that point to exactly how much effort it takes to sound collected despite the low purr in her words.  
  
"Do you expect me to beg?"

  
  
"Yes."  
  
The response is automatic. He moves a hand up to her hipbone, slipping his thumb through the side of her knickers to slide them down and out of the way. He presses his mouth there, where his thumb sits, and to her thigh as he slides the fabric out of the way.  
  
He also really would prefer it if she didn't have that zip in the back. He would much rather push the whole dress out of the way.  
  
  
She tries to ignore the touch of his hand, the slight callouses on his fingers against her skin, the feel of his lips warmer than the thin silk he pulls away. She doesn't tell him she'd never beg, because at the moment she isn't certain that's a promise she won't break.  
  
"You'll have to try harder th--" And the rest of that sentence is lost to a gasp at his kiss at her thigh, so close to newly bared skin, and her hips buck before she can control it. Her fingers tighten in his hair as her body arches into the touch that is _almost_ enough.

  
  
How frequently, he wonders, did she give pain or pleasure to those clients she had but never receive it back. To them, she must've been like a goddess, an untouchable thing. She is, in many ways, that way to Sherlock. Untouchable, unsolvable. But yet, she's here. She's under his skin and inside his pores. He can feel her hips buck and smell her arousal and he is making her feel that.  
  
"Harder?" he murmurs against her thigh, nipping gently at her skin and then pressing his mouth to calm the nerves.  
  
  
Pleasure she rarely gave her clients. It was part of the prescribed game, part of the mystery and the mask. But then sex had never been what interested her about her work, it was the power, the manipulation, that she enjoyed. Sex was simply the best way to get it.  
  
But this was different, and once she realizes it, once the rush of blood subsides and the distracting touch is nothing but a pleasant memory, she will acknowledge it, acknowledge it and bury it. For the moment though, the only thing she has a mind to focus on is him, the touch of his hands against her skin, the warmth of a murmured word against sensitized nerves and the almost maddening way he is interspersing sharp stimulation and tender touch.  
  
One of her hands remains curled in his hair, but the other grasps at the comforter, her nails raking the worn threads when she'd rather be dragging them against his skin. But she refuses to beg despite the fact that her breathing is growing ragged and unsteady and she's long since given up trying not to arch into him, to silently urge for more.  
  
She feels distinctly a violin string, taut with tension, under his hand.

  
  
If only it were possible to simply _play_ her, if only he had the skill he possessed with a bow right now. Instead, he is moving entirely on instinct, working to figure out where to touch and where to taste and what would give the best reaction.  
  
Then again, he does have an IQ of 208. He does not play on the same curve as others.  
  
She arches up into him, and he wants to be cruel, wants to make her beg. It's unfair, of course. She was not cruel to him when he was cruel to her earlier today. So, for a moment, he will give her reprieve. He slides his finger between her legs, testing through touch what is the most sensitive and provokes the best reactions. He follows that with his mouth, to trace with tongue along the same pathline.  
  
  
Oh but he is getting _far_ too good at this.  
  
It takes longer than she'd like to admit to recognize what he's doing, to feel the path of his finger tease along her flesh, to realize that if she gasps or twitches in response that the touch of his tongue follows the same path. The moments of anticipation are nearly maddening once she does, and she can feel tension growing, a physical echo of the pleasure of playing the game and teasing out what he's thinking.  
  
But it isn't nearly enough. There is far too little skin beneath her hands, and he is far too focused. She wants to feel more of him against her, wants to feel him shudder beneath her hand as she is under his. She needs to undo him as he is threatening to undo her, and Irene draws a breath, the barest hint of a whimper threading through it. She tugs at his hair, urging him to look up, to meet her eyes (now dark with just the palest ring of colour around the edge).  
  
"Kiss me."  
  
She manages to swallow back the 'please' that threatens to escape, just barely.

  
  
The way she tastes is particularly fascinating. He can name off sweat and other body fluids that are easily discernible, but there is something fascinatingly alien about her taste. Foreign. Funny, being with her once before, he failed to notice all the subtleties in her taste, in her feel against his mouth.  
  
If he could peel back the layers of her, dig his hands deep within her core, the way a surgeon might, and _know_ her, truly understand her, would she cease to be interesting? Would she stop having the appeal and the strength she has over him? She tells him to kiss her, and all he can think to do is to move forward to kiss her as she asks.  
  
With one hand, he moves up to unzip her dress.  
  
  
The cessation of intimate touch is both a disappointment and a relief, as Irene gathers herself again. She knows it cannot last, not with the way she can feel his body against hers, the way her skin is already flushing warm with arousal. But she can prolong the inevitable, and allow herself the opportunity to undo him as thoroughly as he has nearly done her, before he does.  
  
She can taste herself on his tongue, and the hand that had been tangled in his hair loosens its grip, as does the one that had been gripping the comforter. As he reaches behind her to unzip her dress, her fingers begin undoing the last buttons of his shirt, pushing it away.

  
  
He slides the zip downwards, just as he feels her push his shirt down his arms. His left arm is bruised and meticulously cleaned from his binge, with old scars tracing down his forearm. He suspects he should be embarrassed by them, but he doesn't feel that at all. She knows what he was doing, she knows what he has done, there's nothing to be embarrassed about.  
  
He slips a hand to her back where the zip is down. Her skin is warm, flushed.  
  
"Over the head for the dress?" he asks, giving her a small smile.  
  
  
Irene doesn't have to see the old track marks or the new bruises to know they are there, but they are inconsequential and her fingers move along his arms as if they weren't there at all, easing the shirt off him. He smiles and she finds herself smiling back. His hand is cool against her slowly bared back but she isn't certain if that was because his hand is cool or her skin flushed.  
  
She leans in, her lips tracing the line of his collarbone, leaving a lingering kiss at the hollow between his collarbone and his neck. Her voice is low as she murmurs against his skin, "And if I want to keep it on?"  
  
She doesn't. With every second, every touch that is almost but not enough, the dress is becoming a hindrance. But she challenges him all the same.

  
  
"I think you'll prefer some variety from the last time we found ourselves in this situation," he says with a smirk. That, and he may very well tear it off of her. He wants to peel away every layer and be there, with her, with none of their clothes covering him and none of their walls up. Just for a moment, to see what it would be like.  
  
He slides his hands down her sides, now, down to her hips, and to the hem of her dress. Her lips against his collarbone is warm and distracting, shooting sensation down his stomach, through his body.  
  
"Of course, I could wait until you begged..?"  
  
  
Her lips curve into a smile at his answer, and she sucks at the pale skin at his throat, scraping her teeth lightly. The lingering kiss will leave a mark, and she cannot help but be pleased by the idea.  
  
She runs her fingers along his bared arms, memorizing every inch and every faded scar, and then down his side, alternating warm touch of fingertips with the sharp bite of fingernails. His hands slide over her hips and to the hem of her dress, and she shifts her weight, allowing him to pull the dress over her hips.  
  
There's still a smile in her voice when she answers, "You'd be waiting a _very_ long time if you wait for that, Mr. Holmes."

  
  
"Are you certain?" He traces his thumb along her hip as he rides her dress over it, exposing her stomach to him.  
  
"I can be very patient," he says. So can she. She waited a very, very long time for her victory over him. He wasn't entirely certain he could wait ten minutes for her, now. Frustrating, all of that patience.

  
  
A soft pleased sigh at the touch of his thumb against her hip, or maybe it is at the way he picks up on the cue to pull the dress up over her hips. She pulls back just enough to look at him, to take in the sight of him half-dressed, eyes dark, his hand lingering against her bared skin, but still very much Sherlock Holmes despite it. She wonders if the same can be said of her despite the disheveled hair tumbling down her back and the mussed clothes and smudged lipstick.  
  
"You can," she acknowledges, her fingers now trailing down his front, lingering at the waistband of his trousers. "But I don't think you want to."

  
  
They are undressing each other in opposing directions, he realizes. She is removing his clothes from the top down, and he removing her clothes from the bottom up. He wondered what a psychologist might think about that. Then, she touches his skin right above his waistband and the muscles of his stomach tighten at the touch. He doesn't care about imaginary psychologists right now.  
  
"Do you want to focus on winning, or on what we both want?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. "Because that will change everything right now, Miss Adler."  
  
  
She could point out that they both want to win, that he is trying to win just by asking. She could point out that everything has already changed. But for once it doesn't seem to _matter_ quite so much when she can feel his reaction to her touch just under her fingertips.  
  
It's giving in, surely, to not answer. To let a kiss pressed to his mouth be all the answer she gives as her fingers linger over the metal buckle of his belt.  
  
But is it really giving in when it is what she wants?

  
  
She doesn't reply, and he supposes that means whatever he wants it to mean. He doesn't want it to mean that he's won somehow, because he can't always win against the Woman. Battles with her are too evenly matched, too intricate. No, this isn't a battle. They have a carefully waged war with their vulnerabilities and emotions on the line, and the Woman is always almost his enemy.  
  
She kisses him again, and it's brilliant for all that it does answer.  
  
He breaks the kiss only long enough to pull her dress over her head.

  
  
The motel room's air conditioning is cool against her suddenly exposed skin,and the black lace of her bra looks even darker in contrast as the only thing left covering her. Her fingers work deftly against his belt, undoing the buckle and sliding the supple leather out of his belt loops as he drops the dress... somewhere, she isn't certain and for the moment doesn't care to be certain.  
  
A smile tugs at her mouth as she kisses him again, as she draws the leather belt against his skin with one hand and the other begins undoing his trousers.  
  
  
The subtle threat of the leather belt makes him smile against her mouth. She won't scold him, because she doesn't want it to be a replacement for the drugs. It makes sense, of course, but now that they're here, in this position, she'll show him sensation. He feels the cool leather against his sensitive skin and knows the feeling of it. He reaches out to touch her shoulder as they kiss, and the lace of the brassiere is soft against his fingertips.  
  
When he touches the side of her ribcage, he can estimate how much weight she lost before Karachi, how much she needed to put back on to be comfortable in herself again. He can deduce tight corsets and bustiers in her past. It all feels rather like cheating, though, because he knows who she used to be---and he knows only a small fraction of what she is.  
  
Her fingers begin deftly undoing his trousers, and his erection---sudden and unbidden---twitches slightly at the new sensation of movement.  
  
  
She expects the twitch, which may be the only reason why she notices it, and for a moment she considers all the things she can do to him, all the light touches and barely-there stimulation that would drive him to beg for release. It's an appealing thought, though as his hand ghosts over her shoulder, following the tracery of lace, she isn't certain she can keep it up without begging herself. His exploration had been far too thorough, and the light touches of his hand against her skin sends pulses of aching want down her spine.  
  
Still, she manages to undo his trousers, and her thumb brushes against the front of his boxers before her hands move to ease the trousers down his hips.

  
  
He lets out a little sigh at her thumb brushing against his boxers and his erection. She slips his trousers down, and he is left only in his boxers, and her in her brassiere. He traces his hand along the front of it, as though examining a very serious, very complicated puzzle, and then reaches his hand around to undo the clasp in one swift move of his fingers.  
  
His look is mildly smug.  
  
  
The breathless gasp that his touch along the slope of her breast provokes flows into a soft laugh at the smug look on his face. She raises an eyebrow at him and sheds the garment completely, wearing as little as she had the first time they'd met, albeit thinner, more scarred (including a long thin mark along her ribs that had been her most obvious souvenir of Karachi).  
  
She doesn't remove his boxers, doesn't repeat the light touch that had provoked his sigh, instead running a finger along his sternum, her eyes on his. Her voice is low and breathless and the veneer of self-control is precisely that, a paper-thin veneer.  
  
"Lie back."

  
  
It's his turn to give up control, to let her lead. The smug look on his face vanishes, and he finds himself feeling very vulnerable indeed. He keeps his eyes on hers and moves back onto the bed, laying back and watching her every move.  
  
He can trust her, he tells himself. Yet, it's easier to give her part of his plan or to know that she'll follow through with something dangerous because they really are all they have in the world right now. This, this sort of vulnerability, that's beyond him.  
  
  
She smiles, the expression sharp as razor wire despite the smudged lipstick, and watches him as the smug look vanishes. It's the same smile that had brought politicians and royals to their knees, but the way she moves over him is slow, careful and deliberate, her eyes never leaving his as she straddles him just above the knees.  
  
And even then there is little physical contact, just the illusion of it through radiant warmth off her skin and his. She reaches into his boxers, the silk cool against her hand, and by touch alone strokes the entire length of his erection with one fingertip.

  
  
He keeps his eyes locked on hers, trying to keep his expression as calm and controlled as he can, even as he takes in a sharp breath through his nose at the sensation. She has touched him before, they've coupled before but this---this feels different. Deliberate. Exploration and no time constraints.  
  
Is this what people call lovemaking? It could be. It's difficult to say. Love is too simple a concept for the two of them. Making it is too simple to describe any time they spend together.  
  
  
As far as Irene is concerned, there is no simple word for this. There doesn't need to be. This is simply another facet of the orbit they are caught in, another part of all that being the Consulting Detective and the Woman entails.  
  
Her eyes positively gleam at his reaction, at the sharp intake of breath coupled with the calm, controlled expression. She can practically see the tension, the effort it requires, and she strokes him again, with thumb and forefinger, her thumb tracing along the path of a vein, thrumming with blood.

  
  
He can't stop a sharp breath that comes into his mouth. Pleasure shoots down his stomach, straight to his groin. Her touch is gentle, feminine. She is like him, but the female version of everything he could be, even her touch. Her long nails, her thin, fragile fingers. Each finger could be broken and she would still be made out of grace and femininity.  
  
"Woman," he breathes.  
  
He reaches out to touch the side of her face, the shape of her jaw.  
  
  
The razor-sharp smile softens a touch at his reaction and a pleased look wars with the gleam in her eyes at the touch of his hand against her face, tracing along her jaw. It's almost distracting, but she is intent on coaxing more from him.  
  
Another stroke, this time with her thumb and forefinger ringing his erection, before she lets go and leans over him, her hair falling like a curtain around them, strands featherlight against his face.  
  
"Yes?"

  
  
He leans up to press his mouth to hers. Her touch against him is still warm, still diverting, still distracting. But it isn't enough. Between them, simple touches and cautious looks are never enough. Sex, he imagines, wouldn't even be enough. But it's enough for right now and right now he wants her. Wants to look up at her and have her possess him.  
  
He reaches his other hand down between her legs again, to stroke her clitoris and give her the same pleasure she's giving him.  
  
  
She gasps against his mouth, a sound of genuine surprise at his touch, and the careful plans of playing him, of coaxing more from between his lips, fall away as her entire body reacts. It isn't enough. And she doubts that even sex will be enough, because they are far too much mental creatures as well as physical. But they are here and she is all but aching to feel more.  
  
She breaks the kiss, pulling away just far enough to watch his face, to see the change in his expression as she pulls away, to ease the silk boxers off his hips.

  
  
He's erect, and the cool air of the room doesn't make it fail him as he watches her undress him. He lifts his hips to let her, to allow her easier access to pull them away. He likes watching her take control. He lays back, leaning against his elbows, staying just inches away from her face.  
  
With his boxers out of the way, he moves to line himself up with her, but he doesn't take the movements to push forward, waits for her to make the final move.  
  
  
Her hair is loose and tumbles around her shoulders and down her back; the touch of an errant curl against her spine, against her breast, reminds her of just how vulnerable she is, how for a moment she feels utterly unlike The Woman, the dominatrix. But he is waiting and wanting beneath her even as his fingers had already managed to draw gasps of pleasure from her. And she supposes, that for the moment it is enough, that he is waiting and she is in control despite the vulnerability, and that is enough for Irene Adler.  
  
She keeps her gaze fixed on him, wanting to see every twitch, every tiny physical betrayal in his expression, as she lowers herself onto him, warm and wet with arousal, painfully slow centimeter by centimeter.

  
  
He lets out another gasp as she surrounds him, hot and wet. She's moving painfully slowly, and it is impossible to tell if she's going slowly in order to prolong the moment, or just to tease him. In either case, he finds himself wanting, and his hips move up very slightly in order to meet her.  
  
Yes, this is very different from before. Before, desire was a thorn being roughly pulled from the skin, relieving pressure. This time, it is a slow, careful tug of all of the nerves, creating pressure and relieving it. Dressed and vulnerable, undressed and secure. They are such a strange combination, and yet---they fit.

  
  
A smile twitches once at the corner of her mouth at his gasp, and the same smile twitches again as his hips shift to meet her. It feels like an eternity and an instant until she's taken him completely, and for a moment she does absolutely nothing, memorizing the sensation of the slow deliberate touches that brought them back to this point again. It's a heartbeat's worth of stillness, and then she leans into him again, her hips moving in a slow, steady rhythm as she bends to kiss him, her hair falling against his shoulders, a deep red curl brushing against his cheek.

  
  
He kisses her back deeply, moving his hips to meet with her rhythm. Slower, more carefully than before, but the sensations are no less intense. It is simply different than before.  
  
He runs his hands down her back. He feels the shape of muscle and bone under smooth skin. A map. He would like to have a map of everything that is the Woman to keep lined up to examine should he ever delete important parts of her.  
  
  
She is focused on moving with him, on wanting to draw a reaction out of him that's more than a surprised gasp, that she does not immediately notice his hands moving until she feels his fingers run down her back, following the path of muscles and the curve of her spine.  
  
She hears herself moan as the touch of his hand against her back echoes the brush of his erection against nearly too sensitive skin and nerves. It's nearly too much and not enough, and Irene finds herself clutching at his shoulder, her nails digging into his skin, as she tries to anchor herself against him.

  
  
She moans, and he kisses up her neck, tasting her warm flesh, and tracing along areas with high sensitivity and raised bloodwork under the skin. He wants to make her feel the way he does when she tricks him, when she torments his mind and makes him think more than others do. He thinks about the first time she had him on the ground, tracing his jaw with her riding crop. The image is significantly more arousing than he likes to admit.  
  
Her nails dig into his skin and he lets out a moan of his own. The pain with the pleasure. It's good. It's very good.

  
  
She arches into his kisses even as she smiles at his moan. She likes seeing, hearing, the effect she has on him and she shifts just enough that she can run her fingernails down his back. But even as she focuses on coaxing another groan from him, he is touching her, alternating deft touches and featherlight teasing, and it is delicious and frustrating all at once.  
  
She gasps again, the sound nearly a whimper, and her free hand traces along his jaw as her hips urge him on.

  
  
The touch to his jaw is intimate, and he finds his head moving upwards to look at her, at how she moves above him, close to him. He snakes his hand around to touch her clitoris as they move, so he can watch her eyes, watch her face as he does so.  
  
Sex, he has decided, _is_ an incredibly intimate thing. He wants to be connected to her, and not just physically as they are now. He doesn't want to give her his heart, because his heart is like his hunger or his tiredness---part of him he could easily discard. No, he wants to give her part of his mind, because it's part of him he'll never ignore. He wants to give that to her---and if that is love, then he is not immune to it.

  
  
Sex was a tool, as far as Irene had been concerned, a means of getting what she wanted from the rich, the powerful, the stupid. The simplest, most effective means of gaining information, and protection. But there was nothing she wanted here, no information, no scandal, no protection. Even in the opera house, there had been a sense of advantage, something to be gained in it, even if it had been intangible. Pride.  
  
This time, however, even that small game seemed to have fallen to the wayside. This was intimacy and exploration and nothing between them, no lies or cutting words, just touch and sensation and the Woman and the Consulting Detective.  
  
She'd think of some lie for it in the morning. Some disguise to wrap around herself and the heart that she pretends not to have.  
  
But there isn't time for that thought now, not when he is touching her and the coiled tension that had been sitting in the pit of her stomach threatens to break with every move.  
  
She cries out wordlessly when the tide washes over her, when a single touch coaxes her body to shuddering climax. Her nails bite deep into his shoulder and back as she clenches around him, as if unconsciously wanting to draw him into herself, as if the connection between them could grow any stronger.

  
  
He would like to pretend he is a master at the things he does, but in the case of this, he is just a novice. So, while pride washes over him at the feeling of her tightening around him, as she digs her nails into his shoulder and shudders with climax, he feels his control absolutely fail him. He cries out against her shoulder, his own body climaxing a few moments after hers.  
  
He wraps his arms around her to hold her to him, to keep her there. The last piece of who he was, still here. The Woman, the one woman who matters. Who will always matter.

  
  
Mastery in this case would have been too much like the game, too much a power play, too much of everything that they do to each other to be simple intimacy. Which was the only reason why she smiles as he shudders beneath her, arching into her with the force of his own orgasm, and presses a light kiss to his temple.  
  
As sensation fades, as pleasure and the chemical flood ebb, she becomes aware that he's wrapped his arms around her, not to clutch her to himself in passion or need or artifice, but simply to hold her there. It is unexpected and surprises her, and Irene pulls away just enough to see his face, to draw her hand away from where it had clutched his shoulder to brush a dark curl from his forehead.  
  
It occurs to her that it is a far too tender, far too ordinary, gesture for the two of them. But it seems to fit, in the odd twilight that's caught her. "If I told you to sleep, would you refuse just to be disagreeable?"  
  
  
He looks up at her, and he's reminded of that photograph, the one where they looked like two ordinary lovers on the streets of Montenegro. Would they look like that, now? Entwined, holding each other? Was he really so _average_ a man that he could become someone that would want the ordinary?  
  
"Probably," he replies, his lips twitching into a small smile. "So don't."  
  
He kisses her gently, with tenderness that he is surprised he can show. He has been known to feel the more tender emotions, particularly towards the Woman, but it is all too difficult to express them.  
  
  
 _It will be an anomaly, a blip in the circuitry of an overtaxed and unemotional mind._  
  
His earlier words spring to mind as she shifts gently against his body to return the kiss. She's willing to accept it, that this little moment is nothing more than an anomaly, an aberration in the game they play brought on by the past three days.  
  
It's better than any lie she can come up with at the moment.  
  
"Is that a suggestion or a request?" she asks. She begins to draw away, to rest her weight on the bed rather than on him, but hesitates, uncertain whether that would break the moment between them. Whether she _wanted_ to break the moment.

  
  
As she moves, he moves as well, to turn himself to face her. When this is over, he will---he _must_ \---go back to being himself. He must purge himself of all of the things that will distract him, and that will be the end of it. But for the moment, for this brief respite from the grief of losing the life he thought he would have, he will allow himself this.  
  
What would it be like, if she became a staple of his life on Baker Street? He imagines that John would continue to live with him, spending the occasional night with his new wife. Would the same thing happen if she was there? If she was part of his life in more than just 49 separate text messages and a puzzle to watch him dance?  
  
He lays his head against the pillow. "Either," he says. "Both."  
  
  
Another uncharacteristically soft smile as she settles on the bed beside him. Their respective armour will return with morning light, of that she has no doubt. But sleep for the moment is calling, and she can't deny it, not with languor already suffusing her limbs.  
  
Her fingers run lightly along the curve of his lip, careful to avoid the split, then rests on the bed, next to a tangle of her hair.  
  
"Good night, Mr. Holmes."

  
  
"Good night, Woman," he says, brushing a lock of her hair out of her face. He watches the way her lashes move when she blinks, and he is fascinated by the way the subtle light in the room moves across her skin.  
  
He tilts his head just a little bit. "I don't love you," he says, with all the quietness and subtlety of one confessing deep emotion.  
  
  
She wonders what he thinks her reaction would be to the unconventional confession. He knows her too well to think she'd cry or have some sort of fit.  
  
"'Love is a dangerous disadvantage,' wasn't it?" she asks, shifting so she stares up to the textured ceiling. She sounds matter-of-fact, though the time between each blink is a half-second longer than normal, a sign of tiredness. "Did you think I'd assume you'd changed your mind?"  
  
  
"No," he says. "I just want you to know. It's not enough for you."  
  
  
She closes her eyes and draws the tangled, mussed comforter over her bare skin. "Love is a luxury for the living," she reminds him. And herself, not that she is likely to admit it.  
  
"The dead could care less."

  
  
"Love isn't a luxury, it's a weakness. Something to be experienced and forgotten."  
  
He smiles again. "You are a case. Pressing until solved, and---" He lets his finger linger across her cheekbone. "Probably unsolvable forever."  
  
  
She doesn't open her eyes again to look at him; to do so would be to give something away, to let him know just how much she hears in his words. A woman has her secrets, and the Woman more so, and she has been laid bare far too many times in the past day to willingly offer it again.  
  
But she smiles, and leans ever-so-slightly towards the lingering touch of his finger against her cheek. "Then you'll always have something to look forward to."

  
  
"Always," he replies. He's tired, not just from physical exertion and the chemical exertion of the last few days, but just----he doesn't want to say _emotionally_ tired. No, it's more psychological. He's been through psychological ordeals.  
  
He doesn't hold her, because he doesn't think he'd know how. Instead, he rests his hand on hers as he closes his eyes to drift off to sleep.


	13. In the Harsh Light of Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having found themselves caught in a moment of intimacy that puts lie to the façades they offer the world, how do Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes react when they find themselves waking to the harsh light of day?

It's surprising when morning comes. Sherlock rarely sleeps when he's on a case, and this entire excursion is really just a case in and of itself. Even more than that, he rarely sleeps an entire night. However, when he looks at the blinds in the motel room, he can see the faint hints of pink streaming through. Dawn, then. In the part of the world he used to live in, it would be nearly noon, if not very early afternoon.  
  
He turns his head to look at the Woman, still sleeping next to him. She stayed.  
  
She's different when she sleeps. He remarked on it to John when he found her sleeping in his bed so long ago. Not like an angel, of course, no one would ever think of the Woman as an angel. Instead, she looks like all of the things she's holding tightly together are relaxed, and she's comfortable. It's a strange thing, but beautiful in its own way.  
  
He lets his hand rest on her shoulder. Are there people that find this sort of thing _normal_? Waking up next to a lover, watching the light stream in? Sherlock imagines there must be people who are accustomed to it.  
  
  
Unlike him, she sleeps regularly. The dominatrix could hardly be seen with dark circles under her eyes, and even in her multitude of disguises, very rarely did sleep deprivation figure into it. Self-portraits, all, and the reminder of a woman who likes her luxuries.  
  
But the way she jerks awake at the touch of his hand on her shoulder speaks of just how unused to it she is. It is equal parts the wary instinct of being on the run, and the simple fact that she rarely let anyone get close enough to see her asleep. Vulnerable.  
  
The time she'd climbed through the window of Baker Street had been a calculated necessity, and even then she'd put that off as long as she could without risking losing the game.  
  
She catches herself waking with that telling start and draws a hand across her eyes, giving herself a few more moments to collect herself. A sleep tinged smile, still too vulnerable for her own comfort, tugs at her lips.  
  
"Good morning."

  
  
When she jerks awake, he moves his hand away. He has a startled, almost childish look on his face. The Woman would be unaware, but it is similar to the time he reached out to touch a glass flower sculpture that Mrs. Hudson had acquired from her daughter, and he unintentionally touched it too roughly, shattering the stem. He stood there in horror while Mrs. Hudson informed him it was fine, it would be okay. It is simply a reminder to himself to stay away from the more delicate things within his grasp.  
  
He stills his facial expressions when he sees her smile. That is good, isn't it?  
  
"I had half expected to see an entirely different person sitting in the room again," he says with a small smile of his own.  
  
  
She sits up and the covers fall from her with little care on her part. She doesn't linger in bed, already turning to stand. It's too uncertain to linger, too much an echo of the previous night and its unexpected intimacy that is uncomfortable in well-rested daylight.  
  
Still, the smile lingers on her face. "You might have, if I'd woken up first,"

  
  
He nods. She is far more quiet than he is---and he knows just how quiet he can be when he wants to be.  
  
He nods to the door.  
  
"Distraction over, I suppose the game should continue, then?" he says.  
  
  
She's on her feet by the time he asks, bending to pick up the purple dress from where it had been discarded, crumpled, on the floor. She shakes it out; it's mussed but serviceable. But then it'd have to be, given the lack of other options. The duffel with her spoils from the church in Boulder City and her purse are on the table, and she spies the sleeve of his shirt on the floor as well.  
  
"It's why we're here, isn't it?"

  
  
Is it?  
  
Part of him wants to say _of course_ , because it is why he originally planned to come here. Part of that isn't true, though. He's also here, with her, because it's an escape from the mundane, allowing him to be Sherlock Holmes and her to be Irene Adler.  
  
He makes no move to leave the bed, watching her as she shakes out her dress and looks around the room.  
  
"Unless you intend to use that travel itinerary," he says. "Which would be unfortunate. Australia is hot this time of year."  
  
  
She is supremely comfortable in her own skin despite his watching. But then she had been before. The dress is left on the bed before she collects her underthings from where they'd been scattered about. She finds three hairpins, hardly enough to pull her hair back into its knot.  
  
"Maybe I like the heat," she says as she moves towards the window closest the door. She doesn't, but that isn't the point.  
  
  
"Then maybe I'll take you somewhere warm before this is all over," he says. He has no real intentions to go anywhere warm, really. His next stop is to a contact in Los Angeles before he leaves the country again. It just sounds like the right sort of almost-flirtatious thing to say.  
  
He lays his head back on the pillow and looks up to the stained motel room ceiling.  
  
  
She checks the window and sees that the car is still there, and the parking lot is emptier than it had been. A dark haired woman is packing up her vehicle. Irene sets her things down on the table and picks up a cheap ballpoint pen from its place next to the telephone. That she uses to pull her hair back up as she makes her way to the bathroom. "I thought the distraction _was_ over," she points out as she does.  
  
Deliberate misunderstanding.

  
  
She knows very well what he means, and he finds himself smiling despite everything. There are worse places to be in life than here, he supposes. Or in death, anyway.  
  
He looks down at his arm, where the mottled bruising is starting to darken. He can't move past the wall of words in his mind that reminds him that she _should've_ left and not looked back. Before he can properly register it, he has stood and stepped over to his clothing, slipping on his pants and then his wrinkled trousers.  
  
"With you, Woman, I think the distraction is only just beginning."  
  
  
She runs the sink to splash water on her face and clean up quickly, superficially. It also allows her to indulge in a smile at his words. She almost wants to ask what he plans to do now, whether the casino owner's son would live and this part of Moriarty's web would remain free. But to ask would be to admit she doesn't know, and the distraction _was_ over.  
  
She dries her face with a towel. "Should I take that as a challenge?"  
  
  
He zips up his trousers and looks over to her, washing her face in the sink. It's all sort of _domestic_ , really. Two people just dressing and cleaning up in the morning. _Normal_.  
  
He sighs. "No, I think---"  
  
Breaking their quiet conversation, the phone on the nightstand suddenly rings. Its sharp, piercing sound startles Sherlock more than he'd like to admit. He looks to the bathroom, to the Woman, as though she can explain this.

  
  
She nearly jumps at the telephone's ring, and peers out of the bathroom with a questioning look, meeting his eyes at the same moment as he looks to her.  
  
"I didn't call for room service." Not that a place like this would have such a thing. She moves back towards the table and begins dressing.  
  
  
"Neither did I," he says.  
  
He peers at the ringing phone for a moment, and then reaches out for it. He picks it up, instantly putting on an American accent, sleepy-sounding for the early hour.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Yes, this is your wake-up call," a female voice says. Slight accent, Chinese. Learned English, not American English. Slight roll on the a and r. Woman, late 20's, very awake.  
  
"Of course," he says. "Thank you."  
  
He hangs up and turns to the Woman. "We have to get out of here."


	14. Dodging Bullets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes slipped their mysterious pursuers three times before in Las Vegas, but their luck may not hold out with all their unexpected detours.

She shrugs into the dress as he picks up. She can't hear the conversation, but once she pulls the dress over her head she can see the set of his shoulders, the sudden tension, and she feels herself tensing in response as she zips up the dress, wincing as she catches skin with the hasty tug.  
  
"The car's still. Opposite side of the building. We'll need the bag." She doesn't ask who had been on the phone. That could wait, she trusted him enough for that.

  
  
"We can come back for it," he says. "They know we're here."  
  
He looks around the room. No way out, apart from the primary door at the front, though that is likely to be watched. He dashes past her, to the bathroom. A very small window is in the upper corner, though with his shoulders, it's not likely he can get out that way.  
  
"You can get out there," he says, gesturing. "Take the phone."  
  
  
The 'they' answered the question she hadn't asked, and Irene's frown deepens as she grabs the purse and the car keys. Keyless entry, but no keyless ignition. That'll be another five, ten seconds.  
  
She shakes her head at his plan, at the window. "Why did they call when they could have broken in?" she asks.

  
  
"Too see if we're here," he says. "If we aren't then they wait for us to arrive. If we are, then they either wait for us to leave, or---"  
  
There's a knock at the door.  
  
Sherlock starts, trying to plan for an exit. Anything, someway to get away from here. He stretches his arms out and shuts his eyes, trying to concentrate.

  
  
"Or they startle us into doing something impulsive," she finishes for him as somebody, presumably the mysterious caller, knocks on the door. Presumably they'd be watching the room, including the bathroom window, for exits, and she'd be too vulnerable in the moments of pulling herself out of the small space and dropping to the ground.  
  
Her eye is drawn to the single chair in the room. It's plain and utilitarian, but sturdy. Heavy enough to stand up to years of being used by less-than-gentle patrons. "Take the car keys. You've got a better shot of making it out to the car than I do."

  
  
"Divide and conquer, Woman, I'm not having them do that." It is irrelevant that he suggested they do the very same thing only moments earlier. He knew very well that he would not be able to get through that window fast enough, and the Woman was the person who truly stood a chance.  
  
He grasps the small fire extinguisher off of the wall and grabbed the pen from her purse. He twists the pen open, removing the ink and spring, and he turned the exterior in on itself. He reaches into the drawer, pulling out the bible that lay within. He slams it onto the pen against the fire extinguisher. Nothing.  
  
"Not heavy enough," he says. He reaches back in and picks up the Book of Mormon. He tries that, and the pen goes into the side of the extinguisher.  
  
"Get ready to open the front door," he says.  
  
  
She growls in irritation at his contrary reply, and abandons the thought of using the chair. The chair is too heavy to wield one-handed, and if she has to open the door, the mass isn't going to help anyway. She looks around again as the knock comes again, sharper, more insistent this time (though that might be her own imagination), and her eye is caught by the unzipped duffel bag, and the ceramic statue of Mary within.  
  
Not too heavy, but it is brittle, and nearly the length of her forearm. It was better than nothing, and if she were lucky, the impact could shatter the porcelain and blind whoever was coming through the door. She holds it in her right hand, and reaches for the door, eying Sherlock again. She waits, watching him and straining to hear anything from the other side of the door.  
  
When she suspects their visitor is about to knock or force their way through the door, she pulls it open. A second or two would be better than nothing.  
  
  
He nods at the statue, and the moment the Woman opens the door, he releases the pen, aiming it at the door. It fires like a shot, extending outwards and hitting their assailant---the woman from the clothing shop---in the forearm where she had raised a gun. She cries out a word that Sherlock can only assume must be a swear in Chinese.  
  
He leaps forward, throwing the still-fizzing extinguisher aside and kicking the gun away from the woman.  
  
"Now!" he calls out to the Woman.  
  
  
Irene recognizes the woman's cry of pain, but before she has time to connect it to a certain British diplomat with a penchant for knives, she swings the statue at the woman's face with full force.  
  
The statue shatters spectacularly, and the woman staggers back, crying out. Irene barely notices that a shard of broken ceramic had left a jagged line down her arm, her attention on the spinning path of the gun Sherlock had kicked out of the woman's hand.  
  
She dives for it.

  
  
She dives for the gun, Sherlock reaches behind himself and pulls off the sheet from the bed. He grabs her purse.  
  
"Car has a keyless entry, we should open the doors and run for it. The sheet can be a diversion."  
  
  
Her fingers grasp the gun, and Irene flicks the safety on without a second thought. Adrenaline is keeping her from feeling the jagged gash on her arm and the fragments of ceramic that will need to be picked out later, and she grabs the duffel while backhanding the already wounded assassin with the hand holding the pistol.  
  
She steps over the woman, and nods. She sounds winded, almost.  
  
"Is _that_ what the sheet was for in Buckingham Palace?"

  
  
"No," Sherlock says, evenly. "That was because my escort insisted I would be arrested if I tried to go without it."  
  
So she did know about the sheet at Buckingham palace. He had always wondered if she actually knew or if she'd been simply guessing. Hardly important.  
  
He glances back, and sees her hand is bleeding. It'll need attending to, but that's something to worry about _later_. They have to make their escape now.  
  
"Ready?"  
  
  
"No isn't exactly a possible answer now, is it?" she asks, heading towards the other side of the building, keeping as much of the building itself between her and any other threat that may come their way.  
  
"You should have risked the arrest."

  
  
"Maybe I wanted an air of mystery, rather than just to make an impression," he says, simply to be contrary. "I nearly walked out of the palace without my sheet, I'll have you know."  
  
And if not for John Watson, he would've.  
  
He kneels down and checks the contents of the pockets of their would-be assailant. He knows very well that she's not alone, but he wants to see what else she may have. Wire cutters, a knife, a mobile, and car keys. Very nice.

  
  
"Who said they were mutually exclusive?" She does, however, smile at his admission as she checks around the corner. Their path to the car is clear, and she gestures for the keys.  
  
The asphalt is already warm on her bare feet, but she ignores that too for the moment. "Unlock the doors, we can run for it."

  
  
He presses the lock on the keys just as he throws the sheet out of the door. Several shots ring out, but they only hit the sheet. Sherlock makes a run for it.  
  
His own feet are also bare, and he thinks of his shoes and his coat and everything behind them. Rebuilding is what they do best, the two of them. He spots the sniper from where he'd been hiding, but he pulls back his gun as Sherlock looks.  
  
What? Why would he pull back his gun _now_?

  
  
The sound of gunfire is quieter than she'd expected. Either silenced or distance, but Irene turns towards the motel's front office anyway, watching for movement inside just in case the proprietor had heard the shots and felt the need to investigate.  
  
She doesn't see anything, but then the window's shades are half drawn, and turns back to Sherlock, who is staring out at so--  
  
The glint of sunlight off a scope shows her where the sniper is, and Irene's initial response is to raise the weapon in her hand, even as she does, she hesitates. There is no silencer on the handgun, and a shot from this distance would _definitely_ be heard.  
  
Never mind that there was no way she can hit from this range. Still, she keeps it trained on where the wink of light had come from. "You're a target," she snapped. "And I'm in no shape to be dragging you anywhere if you get shot."

  
  
"He's lowering his gun," Sherlock says. "He has a clear shot. Why stop now?"  
  
He turns back. Is he missing something? _Him_ , really?  
  
"Woman, come back---"  
  
It's at that moment that something explodes. Hot, lashing out against Sherlock's back. He falls forward onto the pavement as the car explodes.


	15. Fire and Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being chased out of a Las Vegas motel by assassins and a car bomb, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler are both worse for wear, and the need to regroup is obvious, as is the need to discover the identities of their pursuers. The question, however, remains whose priorities will win out?

The blast is _hot_ , far warmer than the sun-baked asphalt, and the force of the explosion drives her to the ground. The scream of metal and shattering glass, and Irene covers her head out of sheer instinct.  
  
After the blast, the world sounds strangely quiet, empty, and for a moment Irene wonders if the explosion has temporarily deafened her as she picks herself up. She hurts, her skin is raw and abraded from the texture of the asphalt, and bits of glass and fiberglass and whatever else the car had been made of fall from her like fine snow.  
  
"I think that was the answer you were looking for."

  
  
He sees a burned one hundred dollar bill fall to the ground. So much for that sudden windfall. At least they didn't join it. He gets to his feet quickly, feeling glass cut into his soles. He looks up. The sniper is gone.  
  
He looks back towards their hotel and notices something small and dark lying amongst the glass. He picks it up. Pieces fall into place, and he takes a quick glance back to make certain the Woman hadn't noticed before slipping the object into his pocket.  
  
"The police would've been called," he says. "We need to keep moving."  
  
  
She is too busy surveying the damage to notice what he's picked up, too busy cataloging what she'll need again, what they'll need again, and how to get it. How to disappear again, how to evade the people who had tracked them to the motel.  
  
"Easier said than done," she mutters with a wince as she tries (futilely) to avoid walking on broken glass. She shakes her head, and a few more shards of glass fall from her hair. The gun she keeps at her side. "The woman's pockets. I thought I saw car keys."

  
  
He tosses the sheet her way. His feet are already lacerated, he can walk.  
  
"Cover yourself in case he's still nearby," he says. He steps on the glass, focusing on the door. He can ignore the pain, he tells himself. His body is just transport for his brain, the pain is just neurons firing, explaining that he is injured. It is like hunger and sleep. He can ignore it.  
  
He makes it to the room and grabs their shoes. He kneels next to the woman and grabs the keys.  
  
Her hand grabs his wrist. Her eyes are open wide. He grips her jaw, pressing the keys into her injury.  
  
"Tell your masters that the Woman is dead," he says. "If they want to find me, I'll be waiting."  
  
And with that, he releases her and shakes his hand free. He shuts the door behind himself and walks across the glass.  
  
  
She catches the sheet, trying to ignore the speckles of red that land on it as she does. It occurs to Irene, almost idly, that standing in the aftermath of an exploded car bomb, barefoot and scraped bloody, with a sniper somewhere in the vicinity, invisible, that she still feels distinctly less vulnerable than she had when he'd tried to deduce how she'd broken a finger twenty seven years ago.  
  
She shakes her head, as if shaking away the thought itself, and looks around the parking lot. It's mostly empty, but there are three cars still left. All of them rentals. She dismisses the luxury car immediately, and heads towards the beige midsized. It is easily the most nondescript of the three cars, with enough space for the sniper's gear.   
  
The sheet trails behind her as she does, as she picks her way along. She keeps an eye out for the sniper, but a part of her suspects he (or she) is gone. She says nothing as Sherlock returns; something is niggling at the back of her mind, and she isn't certain what it is just yet, but she knows it may be important.

  
  
"Shoes," he says, offering them to her along with the key. "You'll have to drive. Preferably to somewhere we can get medical supplies for you."  
  
He didn't need to tell her that a hospital was out of the question. She was far from stupid, but he also knew she would be more concerned about a getaway than she would about her heavily-bleeding arm. And he---well, he couldn't let that happen, could he?  
  
  
She looks blank for a moment at the key and shoes he offers, then exchanges them for the sheet and the purse she'd somehow managed to keep a hold of. "Better to get lost in the crowd first, or gain some distance. They should be keeping an eye on the area," she answers as she slips the shoes on. Another moment and she unlocks the car door, fumbling only slightly with the key.  
  
The woman's cry had been familiar, had tugged at some memory, and it irritated Irene that she couldn't immediately bring it to mind. "If they were as prepared as they look, there may be a first aid kit in the car."

  
  
"Fine," he says. "Just go."  
  
He thinks the amount of blood loss she's going to experience within the next few minutes may make him the final decider of what they end up doing regardless of the Woman's opinion. He gets into the passenger seat and immediately looks in the back, finding several weapons and some traveling equipment, along with explosives.  
  
"This changes everything," he says. "We can't go back to the casino without opening ourselves back up."  
  
  
She starts the car (sighing in relief that it's an automatic), and peels out of the parking lot, heading west. There's no thought in the choice; she's deliberately acting unthinkingly to keep from second guessing where the killers would expect them to go.  
  
The car runs well enough, and the air conditioning that kicks on is pleasantly soothing, enough that the adrenaline begins to ebb and she starts feeling the throbbing pain in her arm, the raw sting of scratched palms and knees and the re-irritated wound from the day before high on her leg. "Then we go split up," she answers, her eyes on the road. "Give them two targets to chase, divide their resources."  
  
That was the logical, smart answer. The correct answer. She knows this even as she says it, but the next words come anyway. "That or find somewhere to go to ground."

  
  
"I have a contact in Nassau," he says. "Well, I say _I_ do, but it's Mycroft's contact. Hasn't seen Mycroft since before he started his love affair with baked goods. I think I should be able to play the part well enough."  
  
He pulls a few pieces of glass from his foot. They bleed rather spectacularly, though he imagines with some staunching they'll be fine. It's nothing in comparison to other injuries he's experienced, and not nearly as deep as the knife wound in Montenegro.  
  
"I did promise you a warm escape."  
  
  
An upward tug at the corner of her mouth. "Use the sheet for bandages," she says. "I'd hate to have to dispose of this car too just because you bled all over it. One car fire's enough for a day, isn't it?"  
  
Not that she's one to talk right now, but her mind is still pulling at the puzzle of the Chinese woman. Something was familiar and she wasn't certain what. Something about her cry of surprise and pain...  
  
She's speeding along the road, but for the moment there is nobody else on the freeway with them, and she'd like to keep it that way.  
  
The mention of Mycroft Holmes does bring to mind government, London. And the piece that had been tugging at her mind falls into place. "She spoke Cantonese."

  
  
"Probably," Sherlock says, distracted by the glass in his foot. He staunches the wound with some pressure against it, keeping the blood back with the sheet. He feels some sharp pain. Pieces still in there, then. Not good. He can handle it later.  
  
"I didn't know you spoke it."  
  
  
"British diplomat," she answers. She doesn't speak it, not with any skill. Just knew enough to hear the difference, but she doesn't correct him. A petrol station appears on the horizon, but Irene dismisses stopping. Still too close to the motel for her own peace of mind. And while at some point they would have to stop for medical supplies, she is going to push stopping as long as she can.  
  
They, the car bombers, the assassins, would expect them to stop as soon as they could. The farther away they could get, the better then. "Spent years in the region and had a tendency to swear in it."

  
  
"Knew what she liked, did you?" Sherlock says. He'd picked up the fact that the would-be assassin didn't make it her day job from the clumsy action, and the political nature was obvious from her shoes. However, the specifics aren't something that Sherlock was able to deduce.  
  
He shakes his head. "Someone who can recognize you. But _why_? Why send someone after us who can recognize you but not me."  
  
  
She would have corrected him, would have said she and the diplomat had had common interests, but his unexpected statement about the would-be killer surprises her and Irene turns sharply to him.   
  
"What?"

  
  
"They're here to kill me," he says. "Obvious. But they selected an assailant who would know _you_. Probably owed them a favor or money---more likely the former, considering her brand of skirt."

  
  
She chuckles darkly at that. But then he would not be Sherlock Holmes without that arrogance. It's almost comforting, in its own way. Familiar.  
  
"Given their choice of tactics, I don't think they're quite that discriminatory about whether they kill you or both of us." Blood dripping down her arm is starting to irritate, to distract, and Irene lets go of the wheel long enough to wipe the worst of it on the skirt of her dress. One more thing to replace.

  
  
"Yes, but targeting me. Why would they focus on you? How could they know that you're alive?"  
  
He shakes his head. "It's not good. Not as terrible as them knowing _I'm_ alive, but still very problematic."  
  
He is completely unaware of the fact that he's brushing her off, or really that he's being arrogant at all. In his mind, he's simply being observant.  
  
  
"If they're targeting you, then by definition they already know you're alive," she cannot resist pointing out. Her eyes remain on the road, and a glint of sunlight in the rear view mirror catches Irene's attention.  
  
It could have been a trick of the light, or the imagination of a currently overtaxed mind, or there was a car behind them, coming up over a rise in the desert road.   
  
She isn't willing to risk it being the last, so she speeds up, casting an eye along the road. There is an abandoned gas station, recently closed judging by the state of the plywood still covering its windows and door, and she turns the car sharply into its lot, parking in the shadow of the abandoned building, careful to keep the car out of view of the road.

  
  
"Yes, obviously, and it can only be worse if they expose me," he says.  
  
The car speeds up, and Sherlock doesn't need to glance in the rear view mirror to know the Woman sees something. He holds onto the side of the door as she turns sharply into the station. He glances over his shoulder.  
  
"This is as good a place as any," he says.  
  
  
Her attention is on the road for the moment, on cars that may or may not be coming down the road, not on bloody arms and lacerated feet, and when he speaks, Irene turns to him, momentarily confused.   
  
"What?"  
  
  
He lets out an annoyed sigh. "To stitch up your arm. If there isn't anything in the boot of the car, then there's going to be something in there, something that will suffice."  
  
There's a rumble outside, and he watches as a blue car passes by them, headlights off. He gives a nod to the Woman.  
  
"Well spotted."  
  
  
"Sunlight reflecting off the hood," she answers idly as she finds the button that unlocks the car's trunk and climbs out.  
  
She hides a wince as she moves, and walks around the car carefully. "My arm can wait, I'm not the one leaving bloody footprints."  
  
  
"Mine's not nearly as deep," he says, wincing as he puts on his shoes. They're damaged beyond repair, now, but that's hardly important.  
  
Nor is it as worrisome. And he finds her injuries worrisome. More dangerous, deeper.  
  
"Stop arguing, let's take care of you, and then you're welcome to work on my feet," he says.  
  
  
Maybe it was a symptom of the steady blood loss, or shock, or her own razor focus in not thinking about the car bomb, but Irene merely sighed in response and pulled up the trunk's hood. She wasn't particularly in the mood to be contrary. And perhaps that more than anything was a sign she was worse off than she'd initially thought.  
  
"She learned English from a Briton," she muses, lifting up the floorboard in the trunk and picking up a tire iron. She glances over at the boarded up building. A few minutes out of the sand would be welcome, no matter what. "The woman. That narrows things down a bit."

  
  
"How did you meet her?" he asks. It's a sign of how much pain he's in that he doesn't try to simply deduce. There's also so little information, he tells himself. Asking is sometimes the better way.  
  
"She wasn't a client?"  
  
  
From the simple question, she should have realized just how poorly they were both doing, but Irene is too busy focusing on one thing at a time to recognize it, at least immediately. The tire iron is not as good as a crowbar, but it gives her some leverage, and shoving it between the building's facade and the plywood, she begins prying the wood away from the door.  
  
"Who, the diplomat?" She applies more pressure, ignoring the way that it makes the wound bleed just a little more. "She was a client, but an interesting one."

  
  
He reaches out a hand to take the tire iron from her. His grip is firm.  
  
"You're bleeding too much," he says. "You _know_ that, Woman."  
  
He can't deduce why she's ignoring it. He can act like a brat when he's in pain, and he can ignore his body when he's hurt. But she's too intelligent for that. She knows when to push, and she knows when a safe word is necessary.  
  
"Your masthead said it best, and I think if you try any more, I'll have to carry you."  
  
  
"You're barely in any condition to be walking," she points out before caving and leaning against the structure, against another piece of plywood, this one covering a window. She rests her weight against it a little more than she'd like to admit, but Irene forces her mind to stay on her words, rather than on the bleeding or the pain or the thought of the car bomb again. If she dwells too much on it, she would start shaking, and that is far more human weakness than she'd like to admit for the moment.  
  
"Much less making any threats to carry anyone."

  
  
He looks at her leaning, and he looks at her arm. His mind begins to splay out small, white words over her face and body. Pale, weak. Signs of heavy blood loss. Her body weight, the amount of food they haven't consumed in the last day or so---  
  
He's got to get her to a hospital.  
  
"On second thought, this place isn't such a good idea, I've got a better one. Give me the keys."  
  
  
His sudden change gets her attention, and Irene turns to look at him, her eyes keen and penetrating now that she suddenly has a new focus and isn't simply trying not to think about things.  
  
"You're starting to act erratic, Mr. Holmes. Are you sure you haven't had too much sun?"

  
  
"We'll be getting far more if we get to the tropics," he says. "And as of right now, until we find somewhere safer, it's all still an _if_ , so if you please."  
  
He holds out his hand again.  
  
  
She makes no move to give him the keys in her pocket.   
  
"You're not in any shape to drive, and I'd rather pick a few shards of china out of my arm before I actually go into shock," she says irritably. She loathed that uncontrolled feeling. "This is our best bet for both."

  
  
"Hardly," he says, his voice bored and disinterested. "And you can't even get the window open, so let's save our strength for a quick drive."  
  
He's rather pleased with how bored he does sound. It completely contrasts the raising body temperature and the way his heart seems to thrum. She's being so very _herself_ , and this must be what it's like for John when Sherlock refuses to eat for three days.  
  
  
"I was doing quite well for myself until you interrupted," she points out.   
  
She lowers herself gingerly to a seat on the concrete slab and begins examining the cut on her arm, picking out small, pea-sized flecks of ceramic from around the wound. The bleeding has slowed some, but that might have something to do with the position of her arm, raised slightly above her heart, than anything else.

  
  
He sets his jaw. She's as stubborn as he is, and that makes for a very solid wall when he's just _trying_ to save her life.  
  
"Keys," he says again, extending his hand once more. "Unless you're comfortable with me hot-wiring the car back there, which I have no problem with, though it might make it more difficult for you to run."  
  
  
She ignores his outstretched hand and instead keeps her attention on her arm, hissing involuntarily in pain when she gets a particularly well-lodged shard of porcelain out of the wound. That one she flicks at him with a carefully blasé look.  
  
"Go ahead. I'm not leaving until I've cleaned myself up."

  
  
"You're removing shards that are probably preventing you from bleeding too much," he says, pointedly. "Not to mention leaving a spectacular trail for those who are following us."  
  
The irritation in his voice is still steady, and he's just about managed to keep the panic in check.  
  
  
She gives him a flat look, then levers herself back onto her feet with a wince and returns to the boot of the car, picking up the first aid kit that had been within. She'd ignored it earlier for the tire iron simply for the fact that ducking inside the abandoned gas station before cleaning herself up had seemed a better choice.  
  
Of course, she hadn't expected his sudden stubbornness.  
  
She fumbles, one-handed, with the latch on the first aid kit. "You realize this would go far quicker if you weren't quite so contrary."

  
  
"And you, if you'd learn to take my word as gospel," he replies, irritably. No, being angry isn't going to work.  
  
He steps behind her, putting a hand on her hip, while the other slides down her arm, to where she's injured. It's an intimate gesture, one that suggests concern and caring.  
  
If she's very good, the Woman might even recognize its similarity to when she jabbed him with the needle back in her flat in Belgravia.  
  
He slips the keys from her pocket and steps away from her instantly, moving towards the drivers' side.  
  
"And, unless you want to be left in the desert, you're going to have to learn how to."

  
  
She doesn't notice the similarity, not until he's taken a step towards the car and she realizes the keys are no longer in her pocket. Her eyes narrow and she pointedly sits back down on the concrete.   
  
"Easier to do if your word isn't utterly rooted in being contrary," she points out as she pulls a roll of gauze out of the first aid kit. Not that she _would_ , ever, but that isn't the point, now is it?  
  
The kit is well stocked, but then she shouldn't be surprised, given whose car they had taken. Short of paramedics, killers were the best at preserving lives, namely their own. "I'm not going anywhere until I've stopped, what did you call it, 'leaving a spectacular trail for those who are following us.'"

  
  
He turns back to her after unlocking the door. She doesn't have to be this way, but she _is_ , and it's infuriating. She's doing it on purpose. She's going to bleed to death on purpose, to prove something.  
  
"In the car, then," he says. "There's nothing you can do down there that you can't do in a vehicle."

  
  
"I disagree." Calmly said as she uses some gauze and an antiseptic wipe to mop up the last of the blood that had dried on her arm. She's having some trouble gauging how deep and just how clean the cut is, but the pain is manageable, which means it is probably not too bad.  
  
It stings. Another good sign. Likely there's no nerve damage. She takes the bandage again and begins slowly wrapping it around her arm, though she is doing an abysmal job applying pressure one handed. "You're practically leaving bloody footprints and neither of us can take care of that while you're trying to drive a car."

  
  
"I'll be fine," he says at the door. He's in pain. A not inconsiderable amount, but it's not that bad. Not really.  
  
"Woman, I do not want to have to have to carry you. Get up."  
  
She's bleeding badly. Part of him wants to go over there and help her staunch the wound, to help get it reasonable before he takes her to the hospital. This isn't a terrible idea, she might even accept it more readily. Of course, that means that she wins.  
  
The other part of him wants to have her faint already so he can carry her into the car and get to the hospital. This is also fairly likely, though potentially more dangerous. Of course, that also means she wins.  
  
She's winning in both cases. This is very irritating.  
  
He gets into the car and starts it. Revs the engine.


	16. The Linchpin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still on the run, neither Irene Adler nor Sherlock Holmes can be convinced the other is right, and time ticks away as their injuries take their toll in the desert of Las Vegas. How much time will it take for one of them to give in and, more importantly, who will win out?

She stares at him through the the windshield as he revs the engine, and for a moment Irene is tempted to let him leave, to see how far he will get down the desert road before he turns back. But another part of her recognizes that it'd make things worse, for both of them, for both their far too battered bodies at the moment, to keep pushing.  
  
But to let him drive would be to let him win, and she hates that.  
  
She purses her lips and glares at him before picking up the first aid supplies and standing up. Instead of making her way to either the passenger seat or the back, she walks over to the driver's side and drops the first aid supplies into his lap.  
  
"I'll drive while you wrap up my arm."

  
  
"No," he says. She won't go to the hospital. He knows this, because she's thinking logically. Hospitals are far too dangerous. He should be thinking this way, too, but the danger of a hospital is far less than the danger of losing the Woman to blood loss.  
  
  
"Fine," she grinds out. "If you're going to be stubborn about this."  
  
She honestly isn't sure if he's being stubborn or irrational. Her response to both is the same. Namely, to turn back around and stalk back to the shelter of the gas station rather than the car.  
  
Fortunately, she hadn't added the roll of gauze to the supplies she'd dumped in his lap, so as she sits down, Irene continues rewinding the gauze around her arm, pointedly ignoring him.

  
  
"Woman."  
  
She's sitting down. She's now in the way that he can't pull away to prove a point. It's even more aggravating.  
  
"If you're being this difficult, you can't be hurt very badly," he snaps. Annoyed.  
  
  
She manages to tie the bandage one-handed, but it's irritatingly unkempt, and she knows that she'll have to redo it in an hour, if not less. She finally looks up.  
  
"Hasn't that been my point?"

  
  
"No, your point is to exemplify the stereotype that all Women are stubborn to the point of self-deprecating. Now, get in the car! We have to move!"  
  
He doesn't like the note of emotion that slips through his voice. The sentiment, the worry. It's all very...annoying.

  
  
Now that she's finished what she had been doing, her attention is fully on him and she can hear pick out the edge of emotion, the touch of _something_ in his voice that is different. Her brow furrows as she watches him, and she asks,  
  
"Why?"

  
  
He gestures to the world around them.  
  
"Do you want to stay in the desert?"  
  
  
She remains unmoved and unmoving. "You're not answering the question."

  
  
"Because until you get into the car _I_ can't leave the desert," he says. As if to correct himself, he adds: "Without hitting you, and that might take the paint off the car."  
  
That's what he tells himself, of course, but he won't leave without her. He knows this. He finds himself speaking what he's trying to convince himself:  
  
"I went to Karachi to save your life, and I've got shards of glass in my feet from going back to get the keys to save your life, so I'd rather you just get into the car so that all the work I've put into saving your nonexistent life can remain intact, all right?"  
  
  
She doesn't bother pointing out that the only reason he still had shards of glass in his feet was because he was too stubborn to take care of it now. She doesn't, because he's still talking as if she wouldn't take advantage of whatever words he uses, and there is something here that she isn't seeing, some small piece of the puzzle of whatever is going on inside his head that would make everything make _sense_.  
  
"I wasn't aware that we were still in mortal danger. Well, _immediate_ mortal danger."

  
  
"Every moment we are in this country, we're in danger," he says. "As we've shown, avoiding them one moment doesn't mean we'll continue to. We need to find another car and get to an airport. _Or_ you could continue to stand there and argue and we'll go absolutely nowhere anytime soon."  
  
  
She tilts her head, watching him, and as she does a wave of dizziness hits her and Irene holds very still until it passes.  
  
She knows how much blood she'd need to lose before she start feeling the effects, and it hadn't been nearly enough. Except that measurement had been before Karachi, before her death and the subsequent life on the run and hidden. Less than that, now.  
  
She takes a slow, deep breath and wills it to pass before speaking. "You're missing a step in the equation, Mr. Holmes. You'll cause a scene in the airport in the state you're in now."

  
  
"Yes," he says. "Which is why we need to go and get clothing."  
  
She wobbles, but it's so subtle that Sherlock is almost uncertain he saw it. The Woman is too poised to give into dizziness, and it's everything in him to remain in the car rather than reaching out to catch her.  
  
"And if you get into the car, then I might not have to carry you."  
  
A pause.  
  
"Please."  
  
  
It's the 'please' that convinces her. That is the key to unlocking what she hears in his voice, the edge of actual worry, of sentiment, and when it falls into place she sighs and walks back to the car.  
  
Because she realizes what has been driving him and she caves. It's losing and she cannot help it.  
  
"I will if you let me drive."  
  
The fact that the worry is mutual doesn't make her feel any better.

  
  
"You're not in any condition to and you know it," he says, and his voice sounds a shade defeated. He knows he's lost. He's betrayed himself by showing his emotions and even more so by actually _having_ them.  
  
But he can't just let her take them to buy clothing, to get on an airplane to a strange island and _not_ make certain she's all right. Even if it's only a pint of blood, even if it's---he just can't. He can't.  
  
He's stopping, he realizes. He's stopping everything for her. It's worse than binging for three days because of John because this _won't_ stop. It won't stop until they've killed her.  
  
  
"Nothing a glass of orange juice and an iron supplement won't fix," she answers. There's a touch of forced levity in her voice, nearly. Because she can tell he is caving and the power balance is shifting. And she liked it exactly where it had been before.  
  
She waits for him to move out of the driver's seat. "Maybe two, and a few hours of sleep."

  
  
"Thirty seconds," he says. "And then I'm driving off and sending an ambulance back for you."  
  
It's not a false threat, he tells himself. It doesn't matter that he's concerned about her. No, it doesn't. Because once the ambulance gets here, he can follow it to a hospital to keep her safe.  
  
  
She glares at him, and for twenty seconds does absolutely nothing.  
  
It doesn't matter that the ambulance _could_ put lie to the fact that Irene Adler was dead. It doesn't matter that it would most certainly alert the people seeking them exactly where they were. It doesn't matter because he's still pushing.  
  
Twenty-one. Twenty-two.  
  
With a growl of pure frustration, she stalks over to the back seat and practically throws herself into it, glaring at him in the rear view mirror as she does so.  
  
  
He holds out, counting the seconds in his head until she finally gives in and drops into the back seat. He swallows back the sigh of relief he feels bubbling up. Hospital. Now.  
  
He doesn't talk to her, doesn't even say something smug or smart. He simply starts up the car and drives it down the road, leaving behind an abandoned petrol station and a lot of DNA evidence.  
  
  
And she in turn says nothing. She's resisting the urge to kick the back of his seat in pique because that is more his reaction than hers, and she knows that he is still in considerable discomfort and pain from his injuries. So she simply stares out the window as he drives, a small frown starting to grow as she glimpses a sign for the hospital and he turns.

  
  
He doesn't bother trying to hide where he's going. The lie was useful to get her into the vehicle, even if that was _ridiculously_ difficult. Now they were nearly there. A hospital just on the outside of the city. Assassins were, no doubt, somewhere nearby. It didn't matter.  
  
He pulls up outside of the A &E and stops the car.  
  
"Let's go."  
  
  
She looks from his reflection in the rear view mirror to the hospital and back again.  
  
" _Have you gone completely mad?_ "

  
  
"Only about the time I asked you to come to America with me," he says. "You need to get those stitched up, and then you need to get onto a plane."  
  
He swallows, and his voice is like ice when he speaks because he wills it so. He wills away the sentiment, he wills away the sudden pang of loss he feels as he thinks what he's about to say.  
  
"Australia. Keep yourself under the radar. I'll make certain the woman who saw you doesn't let it out who she knew from this incident."  
  
  
She stares at him in the rear view mirror, and for a brief moment looks shocked by his words. But the vulnerability drains visibly from her face, and when she speaks, her face is expressionless, though there is a brittle quality to her words.  
  
"Still as arrogant and delusional as ever, I see."  
  
She says nothing more and gets out of the car, slamming the door for good measure. The noise attracts the attention of an orderly near the door, and Irene feigns a limp to keep the orderly's attention (she was a maternal type, prone to fussing about her patients).  
  
The orderly approaches, looking concerned, and Irene bends to the other woman's ear, whispering a few words. The woman looks scandalized for a moment, then turns her attention unerringly to the driver's seat of the car.

  
  
Sherlock moves to sit back in the drivers' seat, trying to work out what it is that he wants from this, from giving her up. He can't---he shouldn't care about her safety, he tells himself. He shouldn't care, but he _does_. He tries to delete that emotion, but finds it impossible. He tells himself he simply wants to be more efficient at his plans. This works for a moment, but he knows that it isn't true.  
  
He's wrapped up in his thoughts for so long that he fails to notice the male nurses who come out to the car until they have their hands on his arms.  
  
"We've got you," they say. "It's all right, man, we'll get you help."  
  
Whatever the Woman told the nurse, it keeps him from convincing them he's fine. He finds himself in his own room with a sedative drip on top of the fluid IVs he has. A bone in his hand is set, and the cuts he failed to take the glass out of are cleaned and stitched.  
  
He hates the Woman for putting him through this.  
  
  
She stays at the hospital long enough to forge signatures on the proper papers that would keep the nurses from allowing Sherlock to leave too easily and allow the nurses to bandage her up. Her own injuries are worse than her initial estimate, but nothing that painkillers, a few stitches, some additional fluids, and a caution for rest that will be promptly ignored cannot handle.  
  
Her plan is to return to the gas station and rid the area of the evidence of their passage (who would have been surprised that a gas station, its ground saturated with old gasoline, could explode quite so spectacularly?), to get rid of the car, to find new clothes, and...  
  
Well, she has no plan after that. Australia was off the table, although Nassau held a contrary appeal.  
  
It ends up not mattering, in the scheme of things. After the fact, Irene has a very difficult time remembering just what had happened in the hours after she left the hospital.  
  
But within hours, a nondescript youth visits the hospital and leaves a gift on the nightstand in Sherlock Holmes' hospital room. A familiar piece of gold jewelry, a circlet of diamonds surrounding a large oval amethyst, sized for a woman's hand, resting in the middle of a similarly familiar scrap of black paper, folded into the shape of a lotus blossom.

  
  
He doesn't hear anyone enter, the sedatives are far too high. When he finds himself coming out of it, he looks over to see the ring, the Woman's stolen ring, sitting in the middle of a black lotus blossom. An identical copy of the folded paper is in the pocket of the trousers the hospital has. His eyes widen. She's gone. They've taken her. Not killed her, no. The lotus blossom would've been left with her.  
  
He struggles with the IV, and grabs the two items, examining them initially, and then slipping them into a bag to bring to a lab with him. He grabs some painkillers and gauze from the room, and vanishes into one of the empty labs. He doesn't bother dressing, just wanders from table to table, working on the scrap of paper and the ring. Collecting evidence. The make of the paper, the places it's been. He goes onto the computer and pulls up information about mysterious black market sellers in Hong Kong and London.  
  
There is no emotion right now. He remains in the lab, nude but for the hospital gown, stripping the evidence he can from the two items, and then he books a plane ticket.  
  
To Hong Kong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends _Death Takes A Holiday: By Neon Lights and Desert Sand_. Thank you for sticking with us on this journey, and as usual, we're going to take a week off before beginning to post the next installment of _Death Takes A Holiday_. Look for that sometime around 9/9/2013, life willing.
> 
> And for anyone interested, Lyra will be at [Sherlock Seattle](http://www.sherlock-seattle.org/) October 4-6, 2013, and would love to say hello.


End file.
